topic Re: How to access Field Names in Python Questions

How to access Field Names

VishalShah2 — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 13:07:23 GMT

So I am working on a custom tool that uses one of the existing fields to make a selection by attribute. For example, say I have a feature called Target Feature and in the feature, the fields were called Field1, Field2, Field3, and Field4. I am trying to get a variable to be set equal to arcpy.ListFields('Target Feature') and then to check if a field name is in that feature. The selection I want wasn't working, no selection was being made actually. Here's what I was leaning towards but it didn't work for me:

import arcpy

fieldList = arcpy.ListFields('Target Feature')
fieldName = ['Field3']
fieldValue = ['%45B%']

if fieldName in fieldList:
    if fieldValue in fieldName:
        arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management ('Target Feature', NEW_SELECION, "Field3 LIKE " + "'" + str(fieldValue) + "'")‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

But this isn't working for me. Any help is appreciated!

Re: How to access Field Names

JoshuaBixby — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 16:31:46 GMT

Can you elaborate on "isn't working for me?" Are you getting errors or unexpected results? If errors, what errors exactly (paste the error message here)? If unexpected results, what are you getting and what do you expect?

Re: How to access Field Names

VinceAngelo — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 16:49:09 GMT

Always be careful to understand what an ArcPy function returns. ListFields returns a list of Field objects, which while they include name, also includes type, isNullable, length and a number of other properties. You'd need to use a list comprehension to map the array of Fields to an array of names.

- V

Re: How to access Field Names

ClintonDow1 — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 13:07:25 GMT

Hello Vishal,

There are some issues with your if statements, so currently the script will never make it to the SelectLayerByAttribute call.

The first conditional is:

fieldList = arcpy.ListFields('Target Feature')
fieldName = ['Field3']
fieldValue = ['%45B%']

if fieldName in fieldList:‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

fieldName is a list, since you surrounded it with square brackets. So you are checking if a list holding 'Field3' is in fieldList, not the 'Field3' string itself. The result of arcpy.ListFields contains Field objects which possess a name Property - so we can use a list comprehension to extract them. The result will look something like: ['Field1', 'Field2', 'Field3'], so we can see ['Field3'] isn't inside, however 'Field3' by itself is. This post explains how to search for a list of values within another list, and may help clear it up further.

The second conditional:

    if fieldValue in fieldName:‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Has a similar issue - The list ['%45B%'] does not exist inside ['Field3'], which again has no sublists. At this point, instead you may want to check the value of each row inside 'Target Feature', this is where Cursors come in. However, for what you are trying to do in this script, Cursors are unnecessary, I just wanted to mention them for your benefit.

You don't need to use cursors, because the arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management() tool allows you to provide a query, which you are doing in your above example. This loops through the feature class automatically, cursors loop through it manually.

So therefore, we just need a single conditional statement in this case. With these changes, this should be the result:

import arcpy

fieldList = arcpy.ListFields('Target Feature')
fieldName = 'Field3'
fieldValue = '%45B%'

# list comp to extract field names
if fieldName in [f.name for f in fieldList]:
   query = "Field3 LIKE " + "'" + str(fieldValue) + "'"
   arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management ('Target Feature', NEW_SELECION, query)‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Its also worth mentioning, in case you run into it, that in some cases 'Target Feature' won't be enough and you may need the full path to the dataset on disk.

(Shoutout to vangelo-esristaff‌ for a reminder on the Field objects )

Re: How to access Field Names

RandyBurton — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 17:10:47 GMT

So if the field name is edited in line 4, how about this for line 9:

query = fieldName + " LIKE '" + str(fieldValue) + "'"‍

Re: How to access Field Names

ClintonDow1 — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 17:28:48 GMT

Yes good point, that will work and makes it more robust.

Re: How to access Field Names

VishalShah2 — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 17:29:03 GMT

Sorry about that Joshua, my issue was that the selection wasn't being made. Was bogged down by other projects I forgot to mention what wasn't working.

Re: How to access Field Names

VishalShah2 — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 18:58:07 GMT

Clinton,

What if fieldValue had more than one input? Say:

fieldValue = '%45B%', '%46A%', '%47C%'‍

Would that still work the way you have the script written?

Re: How to access Field Names

ClintonDow1 — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 13:07:28 GMT

In that case it would be appropriate to surround the three values in square brackets to create a list, because you have multiple strings and want to compare for each one of them.

fieldValues = ['%45B%', '%46A%', '%47C%']‍‍‍

Then you can use the SQL IN operator instead of LIKE in that case. The syntax would be:

query = "Field3 IN" + "(" + ', '.join(fieldValues) + ")"‍
# "Field3 IN (‍‍'%45B%', '%46A%', '%47C%')‍‍‍‍‍‍

Re: How to access Field Names

VishalShah2 — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 20:04:10 GMT

But I'd want to check to see if the list that is set to fieldValues is in Field3. So wouldn't it be the other way around from how you have the join listed?

Re: How to access Field Names

ClintonDow1 — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 13:07:31 GMT

In the query the 'Field3' value gets replaced with the value within that column, for each row. So its checking if the value of the Field3 column matches any of those 3 strings and if so the row gets selected.

The join is just a python function on the String type (as you can see I'm defining a string inline: ', ' then calling the function .join() on it), concatenating the 3 strings from the list together, separated by a comma and space into a single string. This has to be done because the query is a single string.

If you used

fieldValue = '%45B%', '%46A%', '%47C%'‍
# ('%45B%', '%46A%', '%47C%'‍)‍‍

It will work as well, but will give you a Tuple instead of a list. This works fine in the current situation, but if you had a script with variable fieldValues, a Tuple wouldn't work because the values within are not mutable - this is why I suggested the list.

Does that clear it up?

Re: How to access Field Names

VishalShah2 — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 20:21:35 GMT

It does! Thank you so much Clinton!

Re: How to access Field Names

ClintonDow1 — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 20:23:01 GMT

My pleasure