Summary: The FieldMap object's OutputField property does not accept assignment to a Field object with a .type property set to u'Integer'. If this is attempted the resulting FieldMap.OutputField.Type property defaults instead to be u'SmallInteger'.When using a FieldMappings object as input to the FeatureClassToFeatureClass (Conversion) tool in order to rename fields from a single input feature class (i.e. no field merging involved) I discovered that there seems to be a subtle bug in the way Field Type keywords are mapped. This issue was discovered in 9.3.1 SP2, however, its so subtle that I'd bet that it still hasn't been fixed in later versions.When the FieldMap object's AddInputField method is used to add a feature class field containing (long) integers to a FieldMap object the resulting FieldMap.OutputField.Type type property is set to u'Integer'. The documented method to manipulate the properties of the OutputField part of the FieldMap object is to take a copy of the FieldMap.OutputField object, which is a Field object, change its properties accordingly (field.Name = "NewName"), and then assign this changed field object back to the FieldMap.OutputField (fieldMap.OutputField = field). However, during the reassignment step the OutputField.Type doesn't seem to accept u'Integer' as a valid Type value, which causes the OutputField.Type property to default instead to u'SmallInteger'.Original Code (renames a single field from the input in the output FC):
gp = arcgisscripting.create(9.3) # create arcgis scripting object
gp.OverWriteOutput = True
gp.workspace = <path to local workspace>
fieldMappings = gp.CreateObject("FieldMappings")
fieldMap = gp.CreateObject("FieldMap")
fc = "inputFC"
outFC = "outputFC"
att = 'att1'
fieldMap.AddInputField(fc, att)
# copy field object, change name and reassign
field = fieldMap.OutputField
field.Name = field.Name + "_New"
fieldMap.OutputField = field
# add field map to field mappings
fieldMappings.AddFieldMap(fieldMap)
gp.FeatureClassToFeatureClass_conversion(fc, outWrkspc, outFC, "#", fieldMappings)Code with workaround:
gp = arcgisscripting.create(9.3) # create arcgis scripting object
gp.OverWriteOutput = True
gp.workspace = <path to local workspace>
typeDict = {'String':"TEXT", 'Single':"FLOAT", 'Double':"DOUBLE", 'SmallInteger':"SHORT", 'OID':"LONG", 'Integer':"LONG", 'Date':"DATE", 'Geometry':"BLOB", 'BLOB':"BLOB"}
fieldMappings = gp.CreateObject("FieldMappings")
fieldMap = gp.CreateObject("FieldMap")
fc = "inputFC"
outFC = "outputFC"
att = 'att1'
fieldMap.AddInputField(fc, att)
# copy field object, change name and reassign
field = fieldMap.OutputField
field.Name = field.Name + "_New"
# workaround for ESRI bug
field.Type = typeDict[field.Type]
fieldMap.OutputField = field
# add field map to field mappings
fieldMappings.AddFieldMap(fieldMap)
gp.FeatureClassToFeatureClass_conversion(fc, outWrkspc, outFC, "#", fieldMappings)Please comment as to whether this bug is still relevant to 10 & 10.1.Regards,Darren
