Arcpy GetMessages in PythonWin

[JacobHorwitz1]

I'm a beginner to Python coding and now working on a basic script program, where I'm using both Print and arcpy.AddMessage/arcpy.AddError in a standalone script for ArcMap or in Pythonwin. However, I'm having issues with how I can do this for arcpy.GetMessages in PythonWin to find a traceback error.

I tried using:

msgs = arcpy.GetMessages(2)
print (msgs)
arcpy.AddMessage(msgs)

But couldn't get any traceback message. Is there a code that helps show the traceback error in Pythonwin?

Full Script below:

import arcpy
from arcpy import env
from arcpy.sa import *
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True

try:
    # Sets the workspace evironment settings.
    env.workspace = "E:/College/Penn State/GEOG 485/Lesson 1/Lesson1"

  
    inRaster = "foxlake"
    contourInterval = 25
    baseContour = 0
    outContours = "E:/College/Penn State/GEOG 485/Lesson 1/Lesson1/ContourFoxLake.shp"

    arcpy.CheckOutExtension("Spatial")

    arcpy.sa.Contour(inRaster, outContours, contourInterval, baseContour)

    # Report a success message
    print "Contour creation successful!"
    arcpy.AddMessage("Contour creation successful!")

except:
    # Report an error message
    print "Failed to create the contour."
    arcpy.AddError("Failed to create the contour.")
   
    # Report any error messages that the Contour tool might have generated
    msgs = arcpy.GetMessages(2)
    print (msgs)
    arcpy.AddMessage(msgs)

[DanPatterson_Retired]

GetMessages—ArcPy Functions | ArcGIS Desktop 

did you try just

msgs = arcpy.GetMessages()  # get all

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

As a note... if you take everything out of a try except block, you will get an error message which is largely the same as would be returned otherwise.  I quite using try except blocks a long time ago... especially in cases where you only want to get the traceback messages rather than 'do' something else on failure.

From notes I made a long time agoo

Script variants	Output
A very simple script, with an obvious error. # version 1 print(something)	( IDE dependent message.... )   File "Path_to_script\script_name.py", line 1, in <module>     print(something) NameError: name 'something' is not defined
As above, but getting smarter. # version 2 try:     print(something) except:     print("ooops")	>>> ooops
Lets bring out the tools and see if that helps. # version 3 import sys import traceback try:     print(something) except:     exc_traceback = sys.exc_info()     print(traceback.print_exc())	>>> Traceback (most recent call last):   File "Path_to_script\script_name.py", line 5, in <module>     print(something) NameError: name 'something' is not defined None

You can draw your own conclusions which is the most useful