I think my python-COM environment is messed up.
Got
D:\> python list-fc.py
../Scratch/blank_canvec.gdb
<COMObject <unknown>>
and expectedsomething like
this:
../Scratch/blank_canvec.gdb\
[u'counties.shp', u'roads.shp']\
counties.shp\
roads.shp
Possible culprits:
- using Mark Cederholm's
python+arcobjects
recipe requires registering com stuff, which conflicts wth
PythonWin's com stuff.
- I'm using Arcgis with python
2.6
instead of the shipped 2.5. This hasn't proved problematic before,
but maybe I just haven't wondered into this section of the forest
before (which means I need to eat crow for Jason
Scheirer).
- I have concurrent python 2.5 and python 2.6 …continue.
In the spring of 2007 the Natural Resources Department of Canada
released digital topographic data for the whole nation under a free and
libre
license
policy. The product is
CanVec.
For bulk downloads, see
http://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/canvec/
(subst http for ftp if that is more to your liking).
Although the data has been out for 5 months or so, as near as I can tell
it has yet to be used in any significant public way (no one has been
yapping about it outside the confines of their cubicle). The sole
reference I could find is Stewart Russell’s my neighborhood, according
to
Canvec.
A modest project to be sure, but I’m happy to see the first one …continue.
After a lot of hairpulling and asking smart people for help (Mark
Cederholm, Kirk Kuykendall) I have a working python script which
searches a file geodatabase and changes the AliasName of the matching
feature classes from the incomprehensible BS_1370009_2 to the
human friendly Residential Area. It does the same for a subset
of the attribute names.
AlterAlias.py can be nabbed from my bitbucket canvec
repository.
It relies on
python+arcobjects
(necessary portion of which is bundled as parco.py)
I took the route of changing the aliasname instead of the fc_name to
make it easier, I hope, to automatically incorporate the twice annual
canvec updates.