Show a custom tool's description in the tool search results of the Geoprocessing pane
I have a custom toolbox (.tbx) added to my favourites and so to find a specific tool within the toolbox, I 'd search (Tools > Favorites > [Type tool name] and then hopefully see the description of the tool in the results display but doesn't seem to display the metadata. Let's say I have a tool called 'Create Raster Extent Polygon' and I enter 'extent' in the search to get the result I need. It doesn't seem to display the tool description even though I have added information in all of the fields in the metadata page of the custom tool. Is there a way to show the tool description for custom tools similar to the inbuilt Esri ones? (See image for the custom tool example and the Esri tool that shows a nice tool description).
Sooooo....
I use the default metadata option, which seems to be "Item description".
Like you, I just tried creating a new python toolbox, editing the metadata of the default tool and searching for that tool. Didn't work:
Then I remembered: For my work, I programmed quite a few tools (e.g. input forms). Because the tools were in constant development, I didn't want to manually edit the metadata each time I changed some parameters. So I created a custom Parameter class and gave the Tool class some extra attributes and wrote a function that creates the tool help files automatically.
def Parameter(*args, **kwargs):
"""Wrapper for `arcpy.Parameter` which allows for a custom attribute `description`.
I can't just inherit from `arcpy.Parameter`, because arcpy is a wrapper for C classes and when I tried, it didn't work as expected. Using a wrapper class and forwarding all the methods and attributes would be too cumbersome. That's why this is a function that returns an `arcpy.Parameter`, using python's dynamic typing to add a custom attribute (which does noting in the underlying C code).
"""
try:
desc = kwargs["description"]
del kwargs["description"]
except KeyError:
desc = ""
p = arcpy.Parameter(*args, **kwargs)
p.description = desc
return p
# Toolbox.pyt
class Toolbox(object):
def __init__(self):
"""Define the toolbox (the name of the toolbox is the name of the
.pyt file)."""
self.label = "Toolbox"
self.alias = ""
# List of tool classes associated with this toolbox
self.tools = [Tool]
class Tool(object):
def __init__(self):
"""Define the tool (tool name is the name of the class)."""
self.label = "Tool"
self.canRunInBackground = False
# attributes for automatically creating the metadata
self.description = "This is a test tool."
self.usage = "You can't do anything with this tool."
self.search_keys = ["test", "another_tag"]
def getParameterInfo(self):
"""Define parameter definitions"""
params = [
## arcpy.Parameter(name="parameter", displayName="Parameter", datatype="GPString", parameterType="Optional", direction="Input"),
Parameter(name="parameter", displayName="Parameter", datatype="GPString", parameterType="Optional", direction="Input", description="This parameter does nothing."),
]
return params
def isLicensed(self):
"""Set whether tool is licensed to execute."""
return True
def updateParameters(self, parameters):
"""Modify the values and properties of parameters before internal
validation is performed. This method is called whenever a parameter
has been changed."""
return
def updateMessages(self, parameters):
"""Modify the messages created by internal validation for each tool
parameter. This method is called after internal validation."""
return
def execute(self, parameters, messages):
"""The source code of the tool."""
return
def create_tool_help_files():
import os
import datetime
import xml.etree.cElementTree as ET
today = datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%d")
for tool in Toolbox().tools:
tool_instance = tool()
metadata = ET.Element("metadata")
dataIdInfo = ET.SubElement(metadata, "dataIdInfo")
# ESRI metadata
esri = ET.SubElement(metadata, "Esri")
ET.SubElement(esri, "CreaDate").text = today
ET.SubElement(esri, "CreaTime").text = today
ET.SubElement(esri, "ArcGISFormat").text = "1.0"
ET.SubElement(esri, "SyncOnce").text = "TRUE"
ET.SubElement(esri, "ModDate").text = today
ET.SubElement(esri, "ModTime").text = today
scaleRange = ET.SubElement(esri, "scaleRange")
ET.SubElement(scaleRange, "minScale").text = "150000000"
ET.SubElement(scaleRange, "maxScale").text = "5000"
# tool metadata
toolMeta = ET.SubElement(metadata,
"tool",
xmlns = "",
name = tool.__name__,
displayname = tool_instance.label,
toolboxalias = "")
ET.SubElement(toolMeta, "arcToolboxHelpPath").text = "c:\\program files\\arcgis\\pro\\Resources\\Help\\gp"
# Tags
searchKeys = ET.SubElement(dataIdInfo, "searchKeys")
tags = getattr(tool_instance, "search_keys", [])
for t in tags:
ET.SubElement(searchKeys, "keyword").text = str(t)
# Summary und Usage
summary = ET.SubElement(toolMeta, "summary").text = getattr(tool_instance, "description", "")
usage = ET.SubElement(toolMeta, "usage").text = getattr(tool_instance, "usage", "")
# parameter metadata
paramMeta = ET.SubElement(toolMeta, "parameters")
parameters = tool_instance.getParameterInfo()
if parameters is None:
parameters = []
for p in parameters:
param = ET.SubElement(paramMeta,
"param",
name = getattr(p, "name", ""),
displayname = getattr(p, "displayName", ""),
type = getattr(p, "parameterType", ""),
direction = getattr(p, "direction", ""),
datatype = getattr(p, "datatype", ""),
expression = getattr(p, "name", ""))
dialogReference = ET.SubElement(param, "dialogReference").text = getattr(p, "description", "n/a")
# Credit
idCredit = ET.SubElement(dataIdInfo, "idCredit").text = getattr(tool, "credit", "My employer\nMy Name\nMy mail address")
# some more general metadata
idCitation = ET.SubElement(dataIdInfo, "idCitation")
resTitle = ET.SubElement(idCitation, "resTitle").text = getattr(tool, "label", "")
distInfo = ET.SubElement(metadata, "distInfo")
distributor = ET.SubElement(distInfo, "distributor")
distorFormat = ET.SubElement(distributor, "distorFormat")
ET.SubElement(distorFormat, "formatName").text = "ArcToolbox Tool"
mdHrLv = ET.SubElement(metadata, "mdHrLv")
ET.SubElement(mdHrLv, "ScopeCd ", value = "005")
mdDateSt = ET.SubElement(metadata, "mdDateSt",Sync="TRUE").text = today
# write XML
directory = os.path.dirname(__file__)
toolbox_label = os.path.basename(__file__).replace(".pyt", "")
ET.ElementTree(metadata).write("{}.{}.pyt.xml".format(os.path.join(directory, toolbox_label), tool.__name__))
# execute the file from IDE to automatically create the tool metadata files
if __name__ == "__main__":
create_tool_help_files()
And it works:
Please don't ask me why...
