Export table to X,Y,Z ASCII file via arcpy

Question

I'm looking for a way to export an ArcGIS table (created with the Sample command) to a text file via arcpy. I can do this in ArcGIS via the context menu by right-clicking the table, but have not found a way to script this. Thanks, Toni

Answer 1

You can do this using a cursor to grab the data from your table and write to a comma-delimited text file.

EDIT: I'm adding a more concise block of code to accomplish the task using the csv module of Python

New Answer:

import arcpy,csv

table =r'c:\path\to\table'
outfile = r'c:\path\to\output\ascii\text\file'      

#--first lets make a list of all of the fields in the table
fields = arcpy.ListFields(table)
field_names = [field.name for field in fields]

with open(outfile,'wb') as f:
    w = csv.writer(f)
    #--write all field names to the output file
    w.writerow(field_names)

    #--now we make the search cursor that will iterate through the rows of the table
    for row in arcpy.SearchCursor(table):
        field_vals = [row.getValue(field.name) for field in fields]
        w.writerow(field_vals)
    del row

Old answer:

import arcpy

table =r'c:\path\to\table'
outfile = r'c:\path\to\output\ascii\text\file'


#--first lets make a list of all of the fields in the table
fields = arcpy.ListFields(table)

i = 1
f = open(outfile,'w')
for field in fields:
    #--write all field names to the output file
    if i < len(fields):
        f.write('%s,' % field.name)
        i += 1
    else:
        f.write('%s\n' % field.name)

#--now we make the search cursor that will iterate through the rows of the table
rows = arcpy.SearchCursor(table)
for row in rows:
    i = 1
    for field in fields:
        if i < len(fields):
            f.write('%s,' % row.getValue(field.name))
            i += 1
        else:
            f.write('%s\n' % row.getValue(field.name))
del rows
f.close()

Answer 2

You may want the "Export Feature Attribute to ASCII", cleverly named arcpy.ExportXYv_stats

http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//005p0000003v000000

import arcpy

feature = "path to feature here"
# fieldnames must be explicitly provided. Note that you will get additional fields based on the feature type (e.g., "XCoord" and "YCoord" for point features)
fieldnames = [X.name for X in arcpy.ListFields(feature)]
# delimiter options "SPACE", "COMMA", or "SEMI-COLON"
# header options "ADD_FIELD_NAMES" or "NO_FIELD_NAMES"
arcpy.ExportXYv_stats(feature, fieldnames, "SPACE", "path to outfile", "ADD_FIELD_NAMES")