ABSTRACT

Programming all GIS analysis or mapping functions from scratch is not feasible because of their complexities; however, many commercial and open-source packages, such as ArcGIS, support such comprehensive GIS functions. This chapter introduces programming in ArcGIS for Desktop using Python. Many practical GIS applications are complex and involve multiple GIS functions, such as modifying and querying features and their associated attributes. The chapter introduces how to use ArcPy and demonstrates its use through a number of examples. It details ArcPy structure, the programming environment, and how to use help documents. The chapter presents several of the most frequently used ArcPy functionalities, and demonstrates how to add the developed Python scripts as a new ArcTool so that others can reuse the script tool from ArcMap.