William Parker - Python for ArcGIS Pro: Automate cartography and data analysis using ArcGIS Python modules, Jupyter Notebooks, and pandas

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Early Access Publication: Python for ArcGIS Pro

Early Access Production Reference: B17951

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN: 978-1-80324-166-1

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1. Chapter 1: Introduction to Python for GIS
2. Chapter 2: Basics of ArcPy
3. Chapter 4: Data Access Using Cursors
4. Chapter 3: Introduction to the ArcGIS API for Python
5. Chapter 5: Publishing to ArcGIS Online
6. Chapter 8: Vector Analysis with Pandas
7. Chapter 6: ArcToolbox Script Tools
8. Chapter 9: Raster Analysis with pandas
9. Chapter 7: Automated Map Production
10. Chapter 10: Geospatial Data Science with SciPy
11. Chapter 11: Case Study: ArcGIS Pro Data Management
12. Chapter 12: Case Study: Advanced Map Production
13. Chapter 13: Case Study: Interactive Data Science Web Map

Programming with computers is one of the most rewarding and frustrating of human endeavors.

Those rewards can be in the form of money, as we can see with todays high-tech salaries. I would argue, however, that the most rewarding part of mastering programming is to make yourself into a computer power user who can execute both simple and complex applications and analyses, written in reusable code, with ease.

The frustrations will come and go, and it is a good thing: you, like me and millions before you, will learn from each mistake (it helps to be a pedant, perhaps, but not being one myself I cant be sure). You will grow and learn with each exercise in this book, and by asking the right questions and paying close attention you can avoid some of these issues.

If you are an ArcGIS expert or novice, seeking to expand on your skillsets: congratulations, you are in the right place. In this book you will learn how to take your existing GIS expertise (or interest) and multiply its potential using a deceptively simple programming language called Python.

Computer programming is its own vast field that cannot be captured in one chapter, of course. In this chapter I will explain the basic knowledge necessary to read, write and run Python scripts. Well leave the ArcGIS tools for later chapters and focus on Python: its beginnings, its current state, how to use it, and importantly, what Python is and what it is not.

We will cover the following topics:

• Basics of Python
• Basics of computer programming
• Installing and importing modules
• Writing and executing scripts

Guido Van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language, was frustrated with the state of computer programming in the late 1980s. Programming languages were too complex, and at the same time, too loose with their formatting requirements. This led to large codebases with complex scripts poorly written and rarely documented.

Merely running a simple program could take a long time, as the code would need to be type-checked (variables declared correctly and assigned to the correct data type) and compiled (converted from high-level code written in text files into the assembly language or machine code understood by the CPU).

As the Dutch programmer completed professional work on the ABC programming language, where he had learned much about language design, he decided he wanted to turn his grips about the limits of ABC and other languages into a hobby.

With a masters degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Amsterdam, his hobbies tended towards the computer, but he did have a love for Monty Python, the British comedy series. So, he combined his passions and created Python, which is now used for all kinds of programmatic solutions. Today Python is everywhere, in the internet and appliances and cars and so much more. Because of its ubiquity and its simplicity, it has been adopted by the GIS software ecosystem as a standard programming tool.

Because of Van Rossums extensive experience with the state of computer languages in the 1980s, he was well positioned to create a language that solved many of their deficiencies. He added features that he admired from many other languages and added a few of his own. Here is an incomplete list of Python features built to improve on other languages: