[GIS] Checking if two feature classes have same spatial reference using ArcPy

arcgis-10.1arcpycoordinate system

Using ArcPy, how do you check if two feature classes have the same spatial reference?

Just checking if the two are equal doesn't work:

>>> import arcpy
>>> fc1 = r"C:\Users\e1b8\Desktop\E1B8\GIS_Stackexchange\data.gdb\test"
>>> sr1 = arcpy.Describe (fc1).spatialReference 
>>> sr2 = arcpy.Describe (fc1).spatialReference
>>> sr1 == sr2
False

factoryCode doesn't work, because custom projections don't have them.

>>> fc2 = r"C:\Users\e1b8\Desktop\E1B8\GIS_Stackexchange\data.gdb\customproj"
>>> sr2 = arcpy.Describe (fc2).spatialReference
>>> sr2.factoryCode
0

There's name, but names can be the same, but have different units:

>>> sr1 = arcpy.Describe (fc1).spatialReference
>>> sr2 = arcpy.Describe (fc2).spatialReference
>>> sr1.name
u'NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_10N'
>>> sr2.name
u'NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_10N'
>>> sr1.linearUnitCode
9003
>>> sr2.linearUnitCode
9001

So it gets a bit complicated. The best I've come up with is:

>>> def CompareSRs (inFc1, inFc2):
    sr1 = arcpy.Describe (inFc1).spatialReference
    sr2 = arcpy.Describe (inFc2).spatialReference
    if not sr1.name != sr2.name:
        return False
    srType = sr1.type
    if srType != sr2.type:
        return False
    if srType == "Geographic":
        return sr1.angularUnitCode == sr2.angularUnitCode
    return sr1.linearUnitCode == sr2.linearUnitCode

And I'm still not sure the above code is air tight.

Is there a better way?

Best Answer

Judging from comments, you might have it already :)

You could compare the Well-Known Text (WKT) descriptions of the spatial references.

sr1 = arcpy.Describe(dataset1).spatialReference
sr2 = arcpy.Describe(dataset2).spatialReference
sr1String = sr1.exportToString()
sr2String = sr2.exportToString()

matching = False

if sr1String == sr2String:
    # Exact string match
    matching = True
else:
    # difference
    pass
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