topic Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated in Python Questions

Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

KimOllivier — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:24:55 GMT

I tend to create a new tool in a 'top-down' process:

Create a new toolbox

Add a new tool

Add in the parameters

Edit the documentation for the general purpose

Open the script to start writing

At Win 7 this has got even harder if you do not have Administrator access to streamline Windoze.

"Adding" a script is not appropriate because I have yet to create the script.
It would be useful to be able to create an empty file with a py suffix right there.

In the absence of a create, you can open the folder with the common dialog and create a text file on the fly and change the name and extension. Then select your new file. But this is impossible unless file extension types have been made visible in Windows control panel. This could also be eased if a file type of Python script was added to the registry so you could create a python script file as an option.

The only other way is to open PythonWin separately and save a script before you start a new tool.
That is not very integrated and is confusing when teaching students. It should be possible to work entirely inside ArcMap to manage the whole toolbox/scripting process.

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

ChrisFox3 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:37:26 GMT

Hi Kim,

How about the opposite, work entirely outside of ArcMap to create your toolbox and script tools. This is the idea behind Python Toolboxes at 10.1. everything you need to define the Toolbox, the script tools, their paramaters, validation and execution code all in one python script. I would encourage you to check it out because although you know longer have the wizard to step you through the creation of the script tool, it is really more convienent to manage everything in the one python script.

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

KimOllivier — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:45:07 GMT

We all would if we could, but the AddIn Python Wizard is not downloadable. Could you get this fixed?

http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/36026-Python-AddIn-Wizard-download-refused

It would still be useful to be able to create a (blank) python script as part of the tool wizard. Just think of all the script kiddies trying to write their first tool and script in the "Geoprocessing With Python" class.

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

ChrisFox3 — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:11:05 GMT

Hi Kim,

Here is the correct link to get the python add-in wizard. However, python add-ins are different then python toolboxes. Python add-ins allow you to build custom ui elements like buttons and toolbars with arcpy.

For more information on Python Toolboxes I would encourage you to check out the following help topic, What is a Python Toolbox.

For the request to create a blank python script as part of the script tool wizard I would recommend you post the idea on ideas.arcgis.com as there may be more people who would be interested in that functionality as well.

-Chris

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:03:50 GMT

Chris
Are you suggesting that we can get some of the functionality of the old "Dialog Designer" days which harken back to AV3.x with add-ins? Is this a Tkinter interface? Any more background docs? (haven't got beta 10.1 loaded yet so sorry if this is obvious)

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

ChrisFox3 — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:41:17 GMT

Hi Dan,

No not quite, unfortunately there is no supported python module at this time for building GUIs with python add-ins. So if you need to build a button that displays a form to accept user input and execute some code you will still need to use .Net or Java add-ins for Desktop.

However, there are many powerful things you can do with python add-ins. For example if you want to listen and respond to certain application events, like onDeleteFeature or onCreateFeature you can do that with a python add-in application extension.

Or if you want to create a tool that allows the user to draw a rectangle on the map to return an extent object and execute some python code based on the user input you can do that with a python add-in tool

More than just the functionality is the fact that python add-ins take advantage of the same framework for .Net and Java add-ins which makes it very easy to share and install these customizations.

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:54:57 GMT

Thanks for the info Chris, I was more interested in the event-based things, I can use non-Java-Net for form development...will have a serious look at this since it opens up a whole realm of new application possibilities.
Regards
Dan

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

DavidWynne — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 22:28:41 GMT

"Adding" a script is not appropriate because I have yet to create the script.
It would be useful to be able to create an empty file with a py suffix right there.

When you set a script tool's source--you should be able to specify a .py file that doesn't yet exist. When you then hit the Next button, it will prompt you to create the empty .py file.

-Dave

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

MoragHawkins — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:41:31 GMT

Hi Dan,

No not quite, unfortunately there is no supported python module at this time for building GUIs with python add-ins. So if you need to build a button that displays a form to accept user input and execute some code you will still need to use .Net or Java add-ins for Desktop.

Are there plans for this before final release? Even 'simple' dialogs like an add-in option pane will be needed for many use cases, and will keep a lot of people staying with deploying toolboxes with parameters instead. Filling an addin toolbar with loads of buttons, menus and combos just to allow a user to specify even just half a dozen parameters will not look great.

Great first step though, good to see python addins

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

ChrisFox3 — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:06:26 GMT

Are there plans for this before final release? Even 'simple' dialogs like an add-in option pane will be needed for many use cases, and will keep a lot of people staying with deploying toolboxes with parameters instead. Filling an addin toolbar with loads of buttons, menus and combos just to allow a user to specify even just half a dozen parameters will not look great.

Great first step though, good to see python addins

Right now what we have in terms of simple dialogs are available with the pythonaddins module. With this module you have the ability to open a dialog which the user can browse to select one or more datasets and return the path of the users selection to the tool. The same can be done so the user can save the path of a new dataset. You can also create a message with optional buttons such as Yes/No, OK/Cancel to get the users input.

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

MoragHawkins — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:29:26 GMT

Right now what we have in terms of simple dialogs are available with the pythonaddins module. With this module you have the ability to open a dialog which the user can browse to select one or more datasets and return the path of the users selection to the tool. The same can be done so the user can save the path of a new dataset. You can also create a message with optional buttons such as Yes/No, OK/Cancel to get the users input.

Thanks for the reply Chris, but this still doesn't really cover it. Perhaps I should add this into ideas.esri.com once we can post outside of the beta community?

FYI a couple of use cases that spring to mind, plenty others no doubt.

1) I want to create an autosave add-in app extension. The user is given a number of options/setup config to control how auto save will work, do they want to autosave every x minutes, and if so how many minutes, or do they want to to only save on all ToC changes inc symbology, only on layers added, only on layers deleted etc, do they want it to pause if they are in an edit session....

You cannot achieve this via multiple ok/cancel prompts, or a toolbar full of menus and toggle buttons or combos (well you could but it would look pretty bad)

2) You have a custom buffer add-in tool written to interact with a particular datamodel. Options would specify how much category A features would be buffered within the tool selection/extent, how much category B would be buffered, category C and so on

Again you cannot really achieve this at present.

Perhaps if it were to go into ideas.esri.com, I would suggest that the same approach as getParamterInfo() from python toolboxes is used, you can read and write arcpy.Paramater() from within an add-in, with a parameter dialog that comes up similar to a toolbox.

Re: Creating a new Python tool is too complicated

ChrisFox3 — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 22:54:54 GMT

Yes, I would definetly encourage you to post this on the ideas site once the 10.1 resource centers are opened up to everyone.