topic Re: Looking for a code example of using Python REST API for applyEdits in Python Questions

Looking for a code example of using Python REST API for applyEdits

DonMorrison1 — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 13:41:41 GMT

Does anybody have an Python code example of submitting an applyEdits to the ArcGIS REST API? I'm spending way too much time trying to get a very simple update to work. I tried to use the API for Python but ran into a problem with that so I thought the REST API might work better. I think my problem is how I'm encoding the parameters but not sure.

I did a browser trace doing the update manually with the ArcGIS REST Services Directory tool and this is the form data that gets sent - I'm just not sure how to make that happen with Python.

adds=&updates=%5B%7B%22attributes%22%3A+%7B%22objectid%22%3A+zz%2C+%22is_copied%22%3A+1%7D%7D%5D&deletes=&gdbVersion=&rollbackOnFailure=true&useGlobalIds=false&returnEditMoment=false&trueCurveClient=true&attachments=&timeReferenceUnknownClient=false&datumTransformation=&editsUploadId=&async=false&returnEditResults=true&f=html

Re: Looking for a code example of using Python REST API for applyEdits

DonMorrison1 — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 18:47:22 GMT

I finally figured it out. Here is some code that does work:

import urllib import urllib.request import json from urllib.parse import urlencode url = '<my_url>/FeatureServer/0/applyEdits' updates = [ { "attributes": {"objectid": 2, "is_copied": 0} } ] params = dict() params['updates'] = updates params['f'] = 'json' req = urllib.request.Request(url, urlencode(params)) req.data = req.data.encode('utf-8') response = urllib.request.urlopen(req) data = json.load(response)

Re: Looking for a code example of using Python REST API for applyEdits

AustinAverill — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 19:44:11 GMT

This looks pretty good! The only thing that you might need to do is generate a token for access in the event that the service requires authentication. That request would look like this, then you would just need to add 'token' to the params.

url = "https://arcgis.com/sharing/rest/generateToken" d= { 'username' : un, 'password' : pw, 'client' : 'referer', 'referer' : 'https://.arcgis.com', 'f' : 'json' } token_resposne = urllib.request.Request(url, urlencode(d)) token = token_response.json()['token']

Re: Looking for a code example of using Python REST API for applyEdits

HaydenWelch — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:17:48 GMT

I believe that the httpx library has been added to the latest version of arcpy's environment:

import httpx import asyncio def get_requests(url: str, edits: list[httpx.QueryParams], client: httpx.AsyncClient): """Build requests using the edit params and the provided client""" yield from [client.build_request("POST", url, params=update) for update in edits] async def apply_edits(url: str, edits: list[httpx.QueryParams]): async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client: # Add tasks to running async loop tasks = [client.send(request) for request in get_requests(url, edits, client)] print(f"Applying {len(tasks)} edits...") # Await the responses asyncronously (send them all at once and wait for them to respond) responses = await asyncio.gather(*tasks, return_exceptions=True) # Filter the responses and check for failed transactions valid_responses: list[httpx.Response] = [] for response in responses: if not isinstance(response, httpx.Response): print(f"[ERROR]: {response}") elif response.status_code != 200: print(f"[ERROR]: <{response.status_code}> {response.reason_phrase}") else: valid_responses.append(response) print(f"Successfully applied {len(valid_responses)} edits!") # Return the json values for all responses return [r.json() for r in valid_responses] async def main(): URL = "<my_url>/FeatureServer/0/applyEdits" # Convert the dict to a QueryParams object (optional), QueryParams is just # a MultiDict so x['a'] = 1 follwed by x['a'] = 2 creates a dict with x['a'] = [1, 2] updates: list[dict] = [{"attributes": {"objectid": 2, "is_copied": 0}}] edits: list[dict] = [{'updates': updates, 'f' : 'json'}] queries = list(map(httpx.QueryParams, edits)) # Dispatch and await the responses responses = await apply_edits(URL, queries) # Do something with the repsonses print(responses) if __name__ == "__main__": asyncio.run(main())

If you need to deal with tons of queries like this, it's definitely worth looking into as it allows you to add the requests to an event loop ([send, send, send -> wait, wait wait] instead of [send -> wait, send -> wait, send -> wait]) so you can dispatch as many as the server can handle at once.

Re: Looking for a code example of using Python REST API for applyEdits

HaydenWelch — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 19:24:52 GMT

I was gonna say you usually want to encode that information in the headers, but apparently ArcGIS expects it to be sent as request params, weird... Seems like a great way to open up a Parameter Tampering vector . They don't seem to use headers for much.

Re: Looking for a code example of using Python REST API for applyEdits

DonMorrison1 — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 04:19:14 GMT

My current use case is very low volume but your example looks like a better alternative to some other work I've done using the multiprocessing package to spin off parallel requests.

Re: Looking for a code example of using Python REST API for applyEdits

AustinAverill — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 12:58:31 GMT

Yeah, one would think. But here we are lol.