Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "we have loaded the ListFeatureClasses.py script with IDLE."

A block of code is set as follows:

   import arcpy
   fc = "c:/ArcpyBook/data/TravisCounty/TravisCounty.shp"
   # Fetch each feature from the cursor and examine the extent # properties and spatial reference
   for row in arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, ["SHAPE@"]):
     # get the extent of the county boundary
     ext = row[0].extent
     # print out the bounding coordinates and spatial reference
     print("XMin: " + ext.XMin)
     print("XMax: " + ext.XMax)
     print("YMin: " + ext.YMin)
     print("YMax: " + ext.YMax)
     print("Spatial Reference: " + ext.spatialReference.name)

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

   import arcpy
   fc = "c:/data/city.gdb/streets"
   # For each row print the Object ID field, and use the SHAPE@AREA
   # token to access geometry properties
   with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, ("OID@", "SHAPE@AREA")) as cursor:
     for row in cursor:
       print("Feature {0} has an area of {1}".format(row[0], row[1]))

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

[<map layer u'City of Austin Bldg Permits'>, <map layer u'Hospitals'>, <map layer u'Schools'>, <map layer u'Streams'>, <map layer u'Streets'>, <map layer u'Streams_Buff'>, <map layer u'Floodplains'>, <map layeru'2000 Census Tracts'>, <map layer u'City Limits'>, <map layer u'Travis County'>]

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "go to Start | All Programs | ArcGIS | Python 2.7 | IDLE".

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.