How to extract top 5 records in search cursor, not in SQL server

[Aнастасия88]

Hello, I am seeking a way to extract top 5 records from a sorted search cursor. According to ESRI, we can use top for sql clause but it is only supported by SQL server. I tried range function (please see below) but it did not work unfortunately.

Thank you in advance for any coding advice!

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(data, fieldName, sql_clause=(None,'ORDER BY IDA DESC')) as cursor:
    for i in range(5):                 
        for row in cursor:
            print("IDA value: ", row[1])

[DanPatterson · Accepted solution]

# assuming numeric data
# fc = your featureclass
# field = your field
a = [row[0] for row in arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, field)]
# assume:  a = [9, 5, 3, 2, 10, 22]

sorted(a, reverse=True)[:5]
[22, 10, 9, 5, 3]

[Aнастасия88]

Thanks DanPatterson for the solution!

It works well🙂

[JoshuaBixby]

You were close with your original code, just a couple issues:

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(data, fieldName, sql_clause=(None,'ORDER BY IDA DESC')) as cursor:
    for i in range(5):                 
        print("IDA value: ", next(cursor)[0])

[Aнастасия88]

Hi @JoshuaBixby ,

I apology for late reply for your solution - I have realized your message just now. 

Kudos for your solution as well🙂