Add folder name as attribute to all shapefiles in that folder

Question

I have many folders with shapefiles in each of them. I want to use python to go through each folder, add a new field to all the shapefiles containing the folder name.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I would tackle this challenge with Walk. Then loop through the feature classes and add the directory names using an UpdateCursor.

import arcpy, os

# The input (base) directory
workspace = r"C:\tmp"

# Generate an empty list, which will be populated with walk below
fcs = []

# Walk through all directories and directories and list all feature classes
walk = arcpy.da.Walk(workspace, datatype="FeatureClass")
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in walk:
    for filename in filenames:
        fcs.append(os.path.join(dirpath, filename))

# Loop through the fcs list, add field and add the directory name
for fc in fcs:
    arcpy.AddField_management(fc, field_name = "folder", field_type = "TEXT", field_length = 250)
    dirname = os.path.dirname(fc)
    with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fc, "folder") as cursor:
        for row in cursor:
            row[0] = dirname
            cursor.updateRow(row)

Answer 2

as just an outline of ideas: first you can get the folder name with something like:

os.path.relpath(".","..")

or also getting the path of directory and parsing it using 'split'

or you could try using os.walk

then find shapefiles with a matching string (again parsing names as needed) using arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()

you can iterate through

then pass that string to AddField_management:

arcpy.AddField_management (FC, fieldname, fieldtype)

then populate it with CalculateField

arcpy.CalculateField_management (fc, fieldname, data)