ArcPy & Python – Converting Case of All Values in Table Fields

arcgis-10.1arcpy

Does anyone know how to use the .upper() in a stand alone python script so it can be used to change all characters in a table into UPPER case? I don't want to use the field calculator since I have multiple tables, etc…

I currently am using a cursor to correct mistakes in my tables, but can't figure out the correct syntax to use it to convert all the strings to UPPER case!

The above question would apply equally well when the change of case desired is to lower or title.

Best Answer

The following example shows how to integrate the built-in python method .upper() with the arcpy update cursor. This example first tests if a field is of type String then checks each row within that string for lowercase values. If there are lower case values, the row is updated with all upper case.

import arcpy

fc = r'C:\temp\test.gdb\yourFC'

desc = arcpy.Describe(fc)
fields = desc.fields

for field in fields:
    if field.Type == "String":
        with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fc, str(field.name)) as cursor:
            for row in cursor:
                if row[0] == None:  # Check for "<Null>"
                    continue
                else:
                    any(x.islower() for x in row[0]) == True
                    row[0] = row[0].upper()
                    cursor.updateRow(row)

Related Solutions

ArcPy – Replacing Non-English Characters in Attribute Tables

I am too quite often dealing with special characters such as you have in Swedish (ä,ö,å), but also some others presenting in other languages such as Portuguese and Spanish (é,í,ú,ó etc.). For instance, I have data where the name of city is written in plain Latin with all the accents removed, so the "Göteborg" becomes "Goteborg" and "Åre" is "Are". In order to perform the joins and match the data I have to replace the accents to the English Latin-based character.

I used to do this as you've shown in your own answer first, but this logic soon became rather cumbersome to maintain. Now I use the unicodedata module which is already available with Python installation and arcpy for iterating the features.

import unicodedata
import arcpy
import os

def strip_accents(s):
   return ''.join(c for c in unicodedata.normalize('NFD', s)
                  if unicodedata.category(c) != 'Mn')

arcpy.env.workspace = r"C:\TempData_processed.gdb"
workspace = arcpy.env.workspace

in_fc = os.path.join(workspace,"FC")
fields = ["Adm_name","Adm_Latin"]
with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(in_fc,fields) as upd_cursor:
    for row in upd_cursor:
        row[1] = strip_accents(u"{0}".format(row[0]))
        upd_cursor.updateRow(row)

See the link for more information about using the unicodedata module at What is the best way to remove accents in a python unicode string?

[GIS] Using Update Cursor to update all fields in a feature class based upon another feature class

To do this with ArcPy cursors I think you will need to use both a Search Cursor to read one table and an Update Cursor to write to the other.

Since you are using a version that is 10.1 or later I recommend using arcpy.da cursors rather than the old style because they are about 10 times as fast.

You would use a run through arcpy.da.SearchCursor() to load a Python dictionary with your IDs as the keys, and your values being a list of the field values.

Then use a run through arcpy.da.UpdateCursor() to read each list of field values and extract them into their correct fields.

However, if you did not have many fields to update and have a unique identifier that is common to both tables, then I think you will find this far easier to do in ArcMap (or ArcPy) by adding a join and then calculating fields in one table to be equal to joined fields from the other.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

ArcPy – Replacing Non-English Characters in Attribute Tables

[GIS] Using Update Cursor to update all fields in a feature class based upon another feature class

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