Near Table generation app

JamesPayne — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 18:39:27 GMT

Hello fine folks!

I would like to create an internal web app or other means by which my non and/or novice GIS colleagues can take an Excel spreadsheet and perform the following process. I’m open to any suggestions of apps or any other processes. Please keep in mind I am unfamiliar with scripting/coding, but have been using GIS for 20+ years so am comfortable with the instant apps, geoprocessing, analysis and most other processes outside the realm of web development requiring code.

The skinny: I receive a spreadsheet from colleagues asking which statistical areas (polygons) are within 40km of the buildings (points) that they give me. I have the static layer of polygons mapped and the buildings are given to me in the form of a spreadsheet (Excel) with coordinates and other info such as names, title info, etc.

Here is the process that I currently perform:

Add the spreadsheet to Pro, then create points via the XY Table to Point from the context menu after right clicking on the table.
Use the Generate a Near Table tool with the new point layer (as the input features) identifying all, not just the closest, polygons (near features) within 40km.

The polygon layer is unchanging and contains about 150 features.

Going back to the generated Near Table, I perform two joins in order to have a final table with all the attribute information from both layers.

The IN_FID is joined to the point layer’s table (ObjectID), the NEAR_FID is joined to the polygon layer.

The final joined table is then copied and pasted as a separate worksheet into the original spreadsheet.

A caveat to be aware of-the spreadsheet that I receive does not typically contain the same amount or type of columnar data, though it always contains the lat/long fields.

I wrote the above process as simple as possible for anyone who would like to read and/or offer solutions to it, but if there are additional details needed to help in my query, please just let me know. Also, if an app/tool is too complex or difficult to make, I would entertain the idea of using model builder where a newer GIS user could simply drag the spreadsheet into the model. I attempted this a few years back for my own ease, but I couldn’t get the iterations down perfectly; since I was the only one at the time needing to do the analysis, I just kept doing the process as described above.

Thanks for any assistance and ideas! Oh, and if this post would be better placed elsewhere, kindly let me know too :).

Re: Near Table generation app

MichaelVolz — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 18:44:09 GMT

James:

Python is a high level programming language that has a much shallower learning curve that other languages C++, C#, javascript, etc., so I would recommend exporting to python and adding the iteration there.

There are a good number of python samples out there and GitHub might also be helpful.

topic Re: Near Table generation app in ArcGIS Web AppBuilder Questions

Near Table generation app

Re: Near Table generation app