ArcGIS - Joel McCune

Outdoor Geography - Again

The real reason I became interested in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) had nothing to do with getting a job. It had everything to do with wandering around in the woods, finding things, and getting back to them. Strangely, in the interim, somehow I now find myself inside (in a basement

Python

Conda and ArcGIS Pro 2.7

For those of us who regularly work with Python and ArcGIS, especially for data science, life just got a lot easier with ArcGIS Pro 2.7. Now, arcpy can be installed just like any other Conda package. This means ArcGIS Pro now can coexist on the same machine and play nicely with Conda.

Python

Create `arcgis` Conda Environment with a Batch File

Although first and foremost a Geographer, after transitioning to the GeoAI Business Development Team at Esri, now I spend most of my time in Jupyter Lab. Although not altogther difficult, if following best practices, when installing other packages and modifying the primary Conda environment shipped with ArcGIS Pro, arcgispro-py3, you

Python

Automatically Convert to Esri Spatially Enabled Dataframe

I frequnetly need a Spatially Enabled Dataframe from a variety of sources, and these sources frequently change. Guessing there is a very good chance I am not the only one doing this - here is my solution to this as a Gist you are more than welcome to use.

Python

Relative Module Imports in an ArcGIS Python Toolbox

The idea of ArcGIS Python toolboxes really appeals to me. I really like them. As is frequently the case in life, the devil is in the details. Python Toolboxes have plenty of interesting personality quirks. Among these is relative module imports when creating Python Toolboxes for ArcGIS Pro. Here is

iPython

Layer to Spatially Enabled DataFrame

As I continue to dive deeper and deeper into the intersection of Geography and Artifical Intelligence - what we are calling GeoAI, I find myself doing a lot of data work. This means I liberally blend the two Esri Python libraries, ArcPy and the Python API. Many times I use

Python

Purge Scratch GeoDatabase

In a lot of the scripts I write, especially data preparation pipelines, I use the scratch Geodatabase - a lot. At the end of these pipelines, especially when testing and re-running the processes multiple times, I like to clean out this workspace to ensure my results are the new results,

arcpy

Use ArcPy to Match Spatial Reference

Frequently when performing data preparation or analysis in GIS the spatial reference or projections need to be modified to match. Also, much of the time the data needs to be modified to match one specific feature class. The difficulty lies in frequently also needing to select a transformation if the

Python API

Loading a Previously Saved SpatialDataFrame from CSV

Increasingly I find myself working with SpatialDataFrames for analysis in Jupyter Notebooks in Python. Much of the time the easiest way to save results for future work is saving to a CSV file. This CSV file can then be loaded back into another notebook as an active SpatialDataFrame for further

Python

Creating a SpatialDataFrame from a Web GIS Item

The relatively recent addition of the SpatialDataFrame object to the ArcGIS Python API was a gigantic leap forward. The SpatialDataFrame marries the common data structure used for data munging and data science, the Pandas DataFrame, with ArcGIS in a familiar (for data scientists at least) and user friendly environment, Jupyter

Python

Keeping the ArcGIS Python API with ArcGIS Pro Current

If you are running the ArcGIS Python API in a virgin Conda environment, this very likely does not apply to you. If you are running the ArcGIS Python API in the Python environment installed with ArcGIS Pro, as of today 05Mar2018, you are stuck at version 1.2.5 while

Pandas

Filter NotNull Geometries in an ArcGIS SpatialDataFrame

When working with Pandas DataFrames it is fairly common to filter out records with null values using the notnull Pandas function. This however, does not work with the geometry column created when loading data into a SpatialDataFrame. It still has a value, albeit an invalid value, but Pandas still sees

ArcGIS

ArcGIS Python Reproject Geometry Object List

Frequently I have a large list of geometry objects I need to get reprojected for analysis. A while back I discovered the reprojectAs method of the arcpy.Geometry object. While useful, I still needed a way to handle a few edge cases to make a more universal way to reproject.

Python

ArcPy Field Name List

Frequently, especially when using cursors, I need to quickly get a list of field names not including the ObjectID nor Geometry fields. I accomplish this by using a quick shorthand function. fields_list = lambda feature_class: [field.name for field in arcpy.ListFields(feature_class) if field.type != 'Geometry' and

Python

ArcGIS to Pandas Data Frame

With the release of ArcGIS 10.4, a few packages included have come to my attention. While numpy has been in there for quite some time, now scipy and pandas are now included. GIS data scientists the world over are rejoicing. While I am still a bit out from starting

Python

Installing Python Packages on an ArcGIS Python Installation

It is little secret I use a ton of Python to get tasks in ArcGIS done. If serious about getting volumes of data processed with ArcGIS, Python is far and above the way to get things done quickly. If you start venturing far into this world, you will discover a

grocery

Grocery Home Delivery with ArcGIS

Most of the time my work related blog posts are much more on the side of technical and less on the side of marketing. This particular post likely ebbs more toward the latter than the former. However, this story map does an excellent job of communicating how to get from

ArcGIS

Cleanse Feature Class Names in Python

Today I ran across a problem with what should be a simple solution, but took me the better part of the morning to figure out...primarily because I was not familiar enough with regular expression matching. ArcGIS is pretty picky about feature class names, whether a feature class in a

ArcGIS

The Feature Class in ArcGIS

A feature class is a single geometry with an attribute table...period. True, it should also have a spatial reference, and likely needs one to function correctly. Still, in the simplest form, all you need is a single geometry (points, lines or polygons) and an associated attribute table. It is

ArcGIS

Create List of Unique Table Values using Data Access Module

A while back I posted a slightly more verbose solution for this. Since then two things have changed. First, I have used Python a LOT more and understand how to use sets, lists and functions a little better. Second, the data access module has been added to ArcPy. The data

ArcGIS

Lessons Learned and Ideas for Python Toolbox Coding

Note: A colleague asked for a ready to run PyScripter template implementing these suggestions. This template can now be found on GitHub at: https://github.com/knu2xs/python-toolbox-template. Instructions for using PyScripter to create ArcGIS Python Toolboxes can be found in a previous blog posting. Recently I dove into and

ArcGIS

SDE Workspace Creation Toolbox

As an instructor teaching ArcGIS Server classes, I frequently have the need to quickly set up new enterprise geodatabases for teaching demonstrations. To streamline this process, I recently created an ArcGIS Python Toolbox with three tools and have made it available on GitHub. To streamline the process even more, there

ArcGIS

Set Up PyScripter to Create ArcGIS Python Toolboxes

For the last year or so, my Python IDE of choice has been PyScripter. Recently I have started to create ArcGIS Python Toolboxes. PyScripter is still my editor of choice for this task...with a bit of customization. This requires two steps, adding the unique file extension (pyt) to the

ArcGIS

Create Custom GPX to Features Tool for Garmin Data Collection

26 Jan 2013 Update: The developer who maintains this tool discovered this post last week, got in touch and asked for a sample GPX file. He implemented a fix to recognize the <cmt> tag. Look for the <cmt> tag to be automatically imported by the GPX

ArcGIS

Download Raster Tiles from an Image Service in ArcMap

Image services created from mosaic datasets can be set up to enable downloading of individual tiles through client applications including ArcMap, web mapping applications and custom ArcGIS Runtime applications. In ArcMap individual tiles can be downloaded from this image service. This can be used to make available data covering a