Delete dbf fields

Discussion created by map.girl on Apr 1, 2013
Latest reply on Apr 2, 2013 by rdharles

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I have a dbf table with four fields: OID,TYPE,FREQUENCY,COUNT.

I only want to keep TYPE. I got this script off this forum and modified it to fit my data but it is not working. Is that because it is a dbf file? It returns the correct fields for the "print field" command. Any other suggesestions?

test_dbf = "C:\\TempData\\testdata.dbf"

data_description = arcpy.Describe(test_dbf)
fields = [f.name for f in data_description.fields if f.type not in ["Geometry", "Raster", "Blob"]]

#fields = [f.name for f in arcpy.ListFields(test_dbf)  <> 'Geometry'] # This didn't work either
print fields

for i,f in enumerate(fields):
    if f == 'OID' or f == 'FREQUENCY' or f == 'COUNT':
        del fields[i]

Thank you in advance

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3 Replies

curtvprice

Apr 1, 2013 4:11 PM

I have a dbf table with four fields: OID,TYPE,FREQUENCY,COUNT.

I only want to keep TYPE.

This should do what you want (except you can't delete the object ID field):

test_dbf = "C:\\TempData\\testdata.dbf"
# one of more fields to keep in a list
keepers = ["TYPE"]
# list all field delete candidates
fields  = [f.name for f in arcpy.Describe(test_dbf).Fields \
    if f.type not in ["Geometry, "Raster", "BLOB", "OID"]]
# remove  TYPE field from delete list
fields  = [f for f in fields if f.upper() not in keepers]
arcpy.DeleteFields_management(test_dbf, fields)

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map.girl Apr 1, 2013 4:47 PM

This should do what you want (except you can't delete the object ID field):

test_dbf = "C:\\TempData\\testdata.dbf"
# one of more fields to keep in a list
keepers = ["TYPE"]
# list all field delete candidates
fields  = [f.name for f in arcpy.Describe(test_dbf).Fields \
    if f.type not in ["Geometry, "Raster", "BLOB", "OID"]]
# remove  TYPE field from delete list
fields  = [f for f in fields if f.upper() not in keepers]
arcpy.DeleteFields_management(test_dbf, fields)

Pesky OID. I don't want this field either. I will eventually be exporting to csv file but it doesn't seem any easier to get rid of it as a csv either.

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rdharles Apr 2, 2013 4:43 AM
In a bind, I've used this program (CSVed), can do just about anything to a csv file...

http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/#csved
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Delete dbf fields

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