Add support for pathlib.Path objects to arcpy

[ScottDavis]

pathlib seems to be the preferred method for working with system paths in Python 3. We've started using it in place of `os.path` in our office recently and really like it. However, we've run into problems with using it with arcpy. For example:

workspace = pathlib.Path('C:\some path') \ 'anotherfolder' \ 'connection.sde'
with arcpy.EnvManager(workspace=workspace):
    pass‍‍‍‍‍‍

Throws this error: "RuntimeError: Object: Error in accessing environment <workspace>"

To work around this, we end up wrapping all of our Path object with str(). For example:

workspace = str(pathlib.Path('C:\some path') \ 'anotherfolder' \ 'connection.sde')
with arcpy.EnvManager(workspace=workspace):
    pass‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

It would be great if arcpy (Pro version) handled these Path objects natively!

[philnagel]

Great news, thank you for sharing that update!

[Ethan_Cranmer]

Per the arcpy team at the Dev Summit this is releasing with 3.7. All tools will work with path objects as inputs. An env setting needs to be set for outputs.

[HannesZiegler]

Congratulations!  The idea made its way into the software - geoprocessing tools and ArcPy functionality support Python pathlib.Path objects, allowing paths to be passed directly without being converted to strings.

Learn more about using pathlib.Path with geoprocessing tools

[BlakeTerhune]

Lovely! Thank you for the great communication, @HannesZiegler