Drawing map from XY coordinates in CSV and exporting it to JPEG using ArcPy?

Question

I have a csv file containing about 40,000 rows of data with X, Y (longitude and latitude) data. It is US data, and I have downloaded a state.shp file on which the X, Y points can overlay.

I am able to do it by hand on ArcGIS, but referencing two books on ArcPy ('ArcPy and ArcGIS - geospatial analysis with python' and 'Programming ArcGIS with python cookbook') still doesn't give me a good idea of how to do it using python script with Arcpy, because almost all data used in their examples are not .csv.

Note: I would like to not open ArcGIS at all, but save the map as a jpeg file directly in the python script. Any hints will help.

Answer 1

To do this look at the Make XY Event Layer code examples:

Creates a new point feature layer based on x- and y-coordinates defined in a source table. If the source table contains z-coordinates (elevation values), that field can also be specified in the creation of the event layer. The layer created by this tool is temporary.

You can then use arcpy.mapping.AddLayer() to add your layer or layer file to a map, and then use arcpy.mapping.ExportToJPEG() to export that map to JPEG.

Answer 2

You can replicate the example in this page about Make XY Event (standalone script one) . You need to add resulting layer to an MXD (preferably to a template with desired layout settings) and then programmatically export to JPEG after setting active data frame's extent to visible extent of your layer (i.e., getExtent).