GetParameterAsText() error in python script

Question

i have a huge problem with an error . when i use getparameterastext and use it for searchcursor , i encounter to an error .for example the below code

import arcpy

featureClass = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(0)

populationField = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(1)

rows = arcpy.SearchCursor(featureClass)

the error is :

Runtime error : ERROR 999999: Error executing function.

the error is different in pythonwin . the error is :

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in File "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Desktop10.0\arcpy\arcpy__init__.py", line 804, in SearchCursor return gp.searchCursor(*args) File "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Desktop10.0\arcpy\arcpy\geoprocessing_base.py", line 357, in searchCursor self._gp.SearchCursor(*gp_fixargs(args))) RuntimeError: ERROR 999999: Error executing function.

Answer 1

When running from pythonwin, check how you are passing the parameters to the script. You can set up a test script to ensure that things will work without having to reenter the parameters each time (as in the example below). GetParameterAsText and sys.argv will enable you to do the same thing. The only difference is the indexing since sys.argv[0] is the running script name.

import sys
import arcpy

try:
  featureClass = sys.argv[1]
  populationField = sys.argv[2]
except:
  featureClass = "c:/temp/x_pnts.shp"
  populationField = "FID"

rows = arcpy.SearchCursor(featureClass)
for row in rows:
  print  row.getValue(populationField)

---

Here is an example of how you would run a script with just command line entries such as the simplified version below:

import sys
import arcpy

featureClass = sys.argv[1]
populationField = sys.argv[2]

rows = arcpy.SearchCursor(featureClass)
for row in rows:
  print  row.getValue(populationField)

The entry on the command line needs to be a space delimited list as show in the image

If you are getting error messages, then the file may be in error or the entries are incorrect.

Answer 2

I suggest checking what your value is in feature class in the output console. After getting the value type print featureclass

featureClass = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(0)
print featureClass