I took @BlakeTerhune's method and converted the list to a dictionary by using a little regex to split on the varying multiple spaces, filtering out the None's (Air Vacuum Valve has one). You can add filters to the dictionary creation to skip the fields such as globalid or objectid if they cannot be deleted and is causing the DeleteFields to fail:
# Create the dictionary of fields from the txt file by splitting the spaces.
with open(r'path to\specificdeletefields.txt', 'r') as txt:
for line in txt:
# split on two or more spaces
# \s <- any whitespace
# {2,} <- cnt to match
splt = re.compile('\s{2,}')
vals = splt.split(line)
try:
if vals[1]: # don't append the None's to the list
if not fcFieldDict.get(vals[0]):
fcFieldDict[vals[0]] = [vals[1].strip()]
else:
if vals[1] not in fcFieldDict[vals[0]]: #avoid appending duplicates
fcFieldDict[vals[0]].append(vals[1].strip())
except:
print(vals)
Then you have two options- you can delete the fields in the existing database by iterating over the toc lyr names using the listLayers(), getting their path to the underlying dataset from the Describe path, and getting the fields from the dictionary from a lookup:
lyrList = m.listLayers()
for fc in lyrList:
fcDesc = arcpy.Describe(fc)
fieldsToDrop = fcFieldDict.get(fcDesc.nameString)
if fieldsToDrop:
fcPath = fcDesc.path
arcpy.DeleteField_management(fcPath, fieldsToDrop)
print(f'{fc} Dropped {fieldsToDrop}!')
else:
print(f'Didnt find matching fc for {fc}')
or do a field map and save the featureclass to another workspace without the fields you want removed:
fcList = m.listLayers()
for fc in fcList:
fcDesc = arcpy.Describe(fc)
fieldsToDrop = fcFieldDict.get(fcDesc.nameString)
if fieldsToDrop:
fcPath = fcDesc.path
fldMap = arcpy.FieldMappings()
# Creating field maps
fldMap.addTable(fc.pth)
# Removing unwanted fields
for field in fldMap.fields:
if not field.required and field.name in fieldsToDrop:
fldMap.removeFieldMap(fldMap.findFieldMapIndex(field.name))
arcpy.FeatureClassToFeatureClass_conversion(fcPath, r'path to other.gdb', os.path.basename(fcDesc.name), '', fldMap)
else:
print(f'Didnt find matching fc for {fc}')
