Latest Contributions by GrantHerbert

Another update. There is a known bug that is affecting this: NIM089163         Using the Import Metadata tool to import metadata from a feature class or shapefile into a layer file (.lyr) does not update unless the current metadata of the layer file is edited first. This also seems to affect the MetadataImporter tool as well. Workaround is the manual edit of the metadata in ArcCatalog. I have scripted automated importing of metadata from the data source, which works once the metadata has been manually edited. ... View more

Thanks for the reply, and an interesting approach there. I haven't had a chance to test it, but there is an ESRI bug affecting the metadata at present. ... View more

Update: If I programatically export the layers metadata to XML, I get the xml file of the underlying data. Similarly, making a change to that XML file and importing it to the layer file will update the metadata of the underlying data instead. ... View more

I have also used lyr.longName, as this has a slash between the group name and the layer name. While this isn't a safe character for output, it is a handy way to separate the names sometimes. for example, I have a script which creates layer files from an mxd, and to identify if a layer is in a group (rather than being a group layer) I use the following and change the output name accordingly (as I am outputting all layers - stand alone, group layers and sub layers and there is a high likelihood of duplicate names):     if lyr.longName.find("\\") > -1:           # change the name           out_lyr = lyr.longName.replace("\\","_")           # or, functionally the same           out_lyr = arcpy.validateTablename(lyr.longName) GroupLayer\Layer becomes GroupLayer_Layer. For generating unique output names I do an Exists() check, and increment a counter at the end of the name as necessary. ... View more

arcpy.ValidateTableName does a good job of removing problematic characters as well. ArcGIS Help 10.1 ... View more

OK, after some time spent debugging this with the ESRI support team I can update this. The following works (may not be the only way to do it) arcpy.SetParameterAsText(1, resultMsg) does output the string message that I want to return, however, I was also raising an error via arcpy.AddError in the script (to log to Server logs) and that seemed to interfere with the result passed. If an error is raised then the message is hidden from view (only the "Unable to complete operation" text is shown in the output area in the Web App). Steps to fix: Remove AddError from script. Put the script tool in a model and set the output parameter to a model parameter. Republish GP service, set to synchronous. Update widget in Web App (add URL again). Confirm result string is now available in output area in widget. The result parameter is now available when the task is run. In the Web App json the GP service now has outputParams filled in:           "outputParams": [             {               "name": "ResultString",               "dataType": "GPString",               "description": "",               "defaultValue": null,               "category": "",               "label": "ResultString",               "visible": true,               "required": false,               "tooltip": "ResultString"             }           ],           "shareResults": true,           "layerOrder": [             "Operational Layers"           ] ... View more

Web adapter advantages that seem relevant to you: Web Tier Authentication Block admin access to external users Hide port and site name Load balancing Will you or IT be doing the support and setup of the web adaptor and authentication? Do they prefer IIS? Because you should choose the one (IIS or Java) that the people doing the support and management are more comfortable with. As I use Windows servers I would choose IIS, for ease of management and setup (and probably easier to integrate with Active Directory), but more importantly because that is what will be easier to for me to manage and support. And I haven't seen any downsides to running the web adapter yet. ... View more

Basically, if you have Query enabled you can always extract the data. The query results are returned to the requestor, so at that point there is nothing you can do to prevent them from getting access to them. If you don't want editing, turn off the Feature Service. You could also try creating a separate editing feature service for the data, and securing that. If you control the GeoCortex app you should be able to disable the Export To Shapefile functionality in your application. ... View more

Hi Sherrie, The problem occurs with the latest geocoder on the data disc and does not appear with older geocoders from earlier data discs. If you don't want to use the older geococder, the only workaround I could find is the same as you - export to shapefile. ESRI told me that they were phasing out the data discs so a fix would not be forthcoming. ... View more

I agree that a validity check would be nice, but also have my suspicions that it would cause the same crashing issue. (EDIT: I used the MXD Doctor to check one of the MXDs and it had an invalid Page Layout, but another problem MXD came up clean). About the best I have come up with is wrapping it in a try: block, which at least catches the error, but I can't seem to prevent it from killing the process shortly afterwards (deleting the local mxd variable fails to help). I can report out what went wrong, and it seems to often be " 'NoneType' is not iterable ", from attempting to access the mxd object, but type(mxd) reports 'arcpy._mapping.MapDocument'. ... View more

Thanks for the quick replies. I also had to put all sorts of checks in place in the code, as I had MXD's reporting they didn't have a activeDataFrame one pass, then that they did when I queried them directly, and not showing the error when processed a second time and seemingly passing it on to another one further down. The issue I posted about occurs when you access the mxd object for the first time,    mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(fullPath) does not cause a spike in memory, but    df = mxd.activeDataFrame (for example) will, and it is at that point that python crashes, so I have no idea how to catch it. I will look into the multi-processing approach, thanks. ... View more