[GIS] How to export selected records to a .txt file

arcgis-10.0arcpypython

I am working on a project where I need to create a tool/method to export the attributes of selected features to a .txt file. I have point features containing addressing information, and the tool would need to export the attributes from one field to a text file.

I have been looking through the ArcPy documentation and found Copy Rows in the Tables Toolset – it can export selected features, but the only output option is exporting to a database table. It seems like this should be a simple task, since exporting to a .txt file is one of the options when manually exporting from a table.

The ultimate goal here is to create a tool and publish it as a geoprocessing service to be used in a web application. I would prefer to find a solution using Python, which I am just beginning to work with and have a little familiarity.

I am currently working with ArcGIS Desktop 10 SP1.

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Resource center export_to_Ascii

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[GIS] Loop through records

The logic behind what you're doing is somewhat unclear, but it sounds like you're trying to sort a bunch of records on a few different fields and then go through them one at a time trying to compare each record with some previous record based on the STID field and if neighboring records don't have the same STID field, then you move to the next until they match.

I think the trouble you're getting into, and this is a shot in the dark, is that search cursors don't support looping backwards. So if you're looking for STID-x and you iterate through your search cursor rows looking for STID-y == STID-x, you may end up at the end of your cursor object before you've done your complete analysis on each record. You can add some print statements to see what's going on for each iteration in your search cursor to help pinpoint where your script is going wrong.

Also, based on the fields and data you supplied above, it looks like you want to be comparing the OBID field to the STID field. If that's the case you need to re-look at your sorting and your getValue statements.

EDIT:

Ok, I got this to work. It looks like your problem was caused because you don't have a 'proper' Object ID for your rows. Not quite sure why this works, but I added a field called FID in Access and set it's type to 'AutoNumber' which stores a unique value for each record (even though your OBID field is unique already). Maybe someone else can enlighten us both. After doing that, I added logic to scrape your records from the 'roads' table into a new table called 'output' which is either created from scratch or cleared of any pre-existing data each time you run this script.

import arcpy
ws = 'C:/temp/test.mdb'
arcpy.env.workspace = ws
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
rows = arcpy.SearchCursor('road','','','STID;FL;TL','STID A; FL A; TL A')

#-- create new table to hold results using 'road' table as template
if arcpy.Exists('output'):
    arcpy.DeleteRows_management('output') #-- clear contents of output table
else:
    arcpy.CreateTable_management(ws,'output','road')
    arcpy.AddField_management('output','originalFID','LONG')

irows = arcpy.InsertCursor('output')  #-- create insert cursor

first = True
for row in rows:
    if first:
        first = False
    else:
        fid = row.FID
        stid = row.STID
        fl = row.FL
        tl = row.TL
        if stid == prev_stid and fl <= prev_tl:
            #-- add previous record to new table
            irow = irows.newRow()
            irow.originalFID = prev_fid
            irow.STID = prev_stid
            irow.TL = prev_tl
            irow.FL = prev_fl
            irows.insertRow(irow)
            del irow

            #-- now let's add the current record
            irow = irows.newRow()
            irow.originalFID = fid
            irow.STID = stid
            irow.TL = tl
            irow.FL = fl
            irows.insertRow(irow)
            del irow

            print stid,fl

    #-- let's store all information from this row
    prev_fid = row.FID
    prev_stid = row.STID
    prev_tl = row.TL
    prev_fl = row.FL

del rows,irows

[GIS] How to pass only selected features in python toolbox

When defining your parameter you need to use a layer, not a feature class, if you want to take advantage of any selections already made upon it.

def getParameterInfo(self):
    """Define parameter definitions"""
    fc = arcpy.Parameter(displayName='Features',
        name='features',
        datatype='Feature Layer',
        parameterType='Required',
        direction='Input')

I grabbed the above code from Set default values for value table in Python Toolbox tool - it looks right, with the key thing to pay attention to being datatype='Feature Layer', but I have not tested it.

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[GIS] Loop through records

[GIS] How to pass only selected features in python toolbox

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