topic Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments? in Mapping Questions

How to symbolize which features have attachments?

TuridBrox — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 10:35:07 GMT

Does anyone know if it's possible to symbolize which features have an attachment? I have a point feature class with an attachment table containing pictures. Only some of the points have attached pictures. I'd like to show with different symbols in the map which features have attachments and which have not.

So far, the best I've come up with is to join the feature class and the attachment table, and to symbolise on one of the attributes in the attachment table. Where the attribute is <null>, there is no attachment. This is not a good solution, because the join seems to make it impossible for me to add new attachments to the feature class. I have therefore exported the table containing the join, but that means the symbology is static.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

NeilAyres — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 16:56:28 GMT

Very good question, and no obvious answers.

I will look forward to some more enlightened answers than mine.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

RachelHappeny — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 17:11:22 GMT

To clarify your point feature has some identifying attribute, such an account number let's say. This account number is also in your table that has the pictures and the pictures are in the table as a file pathway link. Is this correct? If so may I ask why your point feature attribute table does not have the file pathway in it and why it is in a separate table? If it was in your point feature you could hyperlink to the photos.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

TuridBrox — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 10:27:36 GMT

That's a good point, Rachel. I've used a standard feature in ArcSDE databases called Create Attachments. This creates a related table for a feature class with geometry (such as our point feature class), and the pictures are stored in the related table - as you correctly surmised. I guess it works in this way so people don't have to change the schema of their original feature class. The two are related via the object id in the original feature class. BTW the pictures are not linked to with a pathway, they reside in the database as blob features.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

XanderBakker — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 12:42:18 GMT

I guess you would need a physical field in you attribute table that indicates if the feature has an attachment. You could do the following:

add a new field
calculate the field like this:

This is the code used:

def hasAttachment(oid):
    fc = r"D:\Xander\GeoNet\Attachments\test.gdb\test"
    att = "{0}__ATTACH".format(fc)
    fld_reloid = "REL_OBJECTID"
    lst_relOID = list(set([r[0] for r in arcpy.da.SearchCursor(att, (fld_reloid))]))
    return 1 if oid in lst_relOID else 0

The bad thing is that you would have to change the reference on line 2 where the path and name of the featureclass is indicated (I don't know how to access the path to the fc from the field calculator). The other thing is that every time you update attachments, you will have to recalculate. You will need to be in an edit session to calculate the field.

The result is a field that has value 1 for those features with attachments and value 0 for those that don't.

Kind regards, Xander

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

NeilAyres — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 07:19:36 GMT

How fast does that go Xander.?

As I understand it, you are running a search cursor over the attachment table for every oid in the primary Fc.

It would probably be better to write an updating script which reads the attachment table once, stores the results in a list or dict, then looks through the fc to update. But this would not be implementable in the field calculator. But good thinking.

Perhaps there is an "idea" here to make symbolization of records with / without attachments easier.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

XanderBakker — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 23:05:20 GMT

You are absolutely right. It would be better to create a tool and use the arcpy.da.UpdateCursor to update the featureclass based on a list (dictionary is not necessary) with REL_OBJECTID's from the attachment table.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

XanderBakker — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 12:42:21 GMT

And to show an (untested) example of how that could be:

create a toolbox
add a script to the toolbox (see content below)
define first parameter as a featureclass
define second parameter as field, obtained from the fc in first parameter

Add the output field to the featureclass and run the tool.

import arcpy
def main():

    fc = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(0)
    fldname = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(1)

    lst_OIDs = createRelObjectidListAttachments(fc)

    flds = ("OID@", fldname)
    with arcpy.da.InsertCursor(fc, flds) as curs:
        for row in curs:
            row[1] = 1 if row[0] in lst_OIDs else 0
            curs.updateRow(row)

def createRelObjectidListAttachments(fc):
    att = "{0}__ATTACH".format(fc)
    fld_reloid = "REL_OBJECTID" 
    lst_relOID = list(set([r[0] for r in arcpy.da.SearchCursor(att, (fld_reloid))]))
    return lst_relOID

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Be aware: the code has not been tested and and does not perform any error handling.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

NeilAyres — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:15:24 GMT

Just tried to implement this tool from Xander, thank you.

However, it won't work as stated. You can't iterate over an insert cursor.

It should be UpdateCursor, because we are updating an existing field.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

XanderBakker — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:17:10 GMT

You are absolutely right. Good catch!

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

NeilAyres — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:19:05 GMT

And I also had to wrap my update in an editing session.

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

NatCarter — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 17:24:30 GMT

If you do a Join between the Feature Class and the Attachement table to identify which features have attachments or not the resultant layer will not expose the attachments when using the Identify tool. This means we can symbolize them as needed but we loose the functionality of retrieving the one or many attachments since a join is a one-to-one and attachments are a one-to-many relationship.

Xander has a good process to identify those features that have attachments and make note of it in a new field in the feature class but this is a job that needs to be run after every edit or built into a users workflow.

An on the fly way to accomplish the symbology we are after without extra fields and jobs to calculate those fields is to leverage the layer's definition query. ESRI's documentation refers to this as a Subquery when you build a definition query for a layer that has to do with data from another feature class or table. Try using this syntax to complete the SQL statement in the Definition Query property of your layer to filter its records based on the presence or absence of attachments. In this example Global ID in the Feature Class is used as the foreign key in the Attachment Table.

Feature with Attachments = GLOBALID IN (SELECT REL_GLOBALID FROM <your attachment table>)

Feature without Attachments = GLOBALID NOT IN (SELECT REL_GLOBALID FROM <your attachment table>)

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

RegistruConstanta — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 07:05:10 GMT

In my case i just make a new join between the feature layer and the attachment using the OBJECTID field and the REL_OBJECTID field and i want to keep all the records. Those with matching will be the ones with attachments and those with <null> will be without.

Hope this will help someone

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

ThomasFurcron — Fri, 10 May 2019 20:53:39 GMT

I had a similar issue, where I was trying to determin which features had an attachment, but I think the solution will work here as well.

With in the defintion query of the feature class you can define that you only want those with attachments and then symblogize those differently. You can do this using

OBJECTID in (Select REL_OBJECTID FROM featureclass__ATTACH where DATA_SIZE > 0)

This can be used to make a selection or in the defintion query to only show those with attachments, it can also be used to make selections based on any related table.

Good luck.

Tom

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

XanderBakker — Fri, 10 May 2019 21:24:10 GMT

In addition what currently is possible using Arcade: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/mapping/visualize-your-attachments-in-arcgis-online-with-arcade/

Re: How to symbolize which features have attachments?

ChadBunn1 — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 21:51:38 GMT

This worked perfectly for me thank you!