Using Python scripting
Due to the simplicity of Python, the 23-year-old scripting language has been widely used to build various applications. Python has also been embedded into other products as a way to extend its functionality. ArcGIS is one of these products that adopted Python for this purpose. In this section, we will learn about a basic Python script to call existing geoprocessing tools, and then we will use these scripts to create a small tool that automatically backs up our Bestaurant geodatabase on a daily basis.
Note
To learn more about advanced Python scripting techniques, you can visit www.Python.org.
You don't have to install Python for the upcoming exercises; if you have ArcGIS for Desktop 10.x, Python 2.7 is installed and configured and ready for use. Let's do some basic warm up exercises on Python before we start on the real work:
Click on the Start menu, expand the ArcGIS folder, expand Python 2.7, and then click on IDLE (Python GUI) to open the Python editor, as shown in the...
