Using Arcpy to search geodatabase for feature with smallest number of rows and export as .SHP

Question

I have created a bunch of grids for a city boundary area. I would like to know how to use the Arcpy module to look through a geodatabase and find the grid with the smallest number of rows (assuming that these grids are all the same size and the fewest is the most efficient grid) and then export only that feature out as a .SHP.

Answer 1

this might help:

import arcpy
arcpy.env.workspace=r"C:\temp\data.gdb"
fcs = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()
rc_old = int(99999999999999)
export_fc = ""
for fc in fcs:
  rc = int(arcpy.GetCount_management(fc)[0])
  print fc
  print rc
  if rc < rc_old:
    export_fc = fc
    rc_old = rc
arcpy.FeatureClassToShapefile_conversion(export_fc,r"C:\temp")

Answer 2

Try the below. Could do something with arcpy.ListFeatureClasses as well, but using arcpy.da.Walk will allow you to step into any feature datasets you might have in your geodatabase.

import arcpy
import os
from collections import OrderedDict


def find_smallest(gdb):
    d = {}
    walk = arcpy.da.Walk(gdb, datatype='FeatureClass')
    for p, dirnames, fcs in walk:
        for fc in fcs:
            fcpath = os.path.join(p, fc)
            d[fcpath] = int(arcpy.GetCount_management(fcpath)[0])
    return OrderedDict(sorted(d.items(), key=lambda t: t[1])).keys()[0]


if __name__ == '__main__':
    gdb = 'your_gdb'
    out_shapefile = 'your_output'

    arcpy.CopyFeatures_management(
            find_smallest(gdb),
            out_shapefile)