Empty feature classes made when trying to split by attribute

Question

I am working with a Basic license of ArcMap 10.3, and I am trying to split a feature class into multiple feature classes in a geodatabase by unique values of an attribute. More specifically, I have a feature class of locations of 78 different species, and I want to create individual feature classes for each species. I have put together some code that I have found in various places (including here), and I can get it to create all the feature classes with all the fields, but each one is empty, and I can't figure out why. I am very new to arcpy and coding in general.

# Reads the feature class for different values in the attribute
cursor = arcpy.SearchCursor(inFC)
row = cursor.next()
attribute_values = set([])

strAtt = "ELCODE_BCD"
print strAtt

while row:
    attribute_values.add(row.getValue(strAtt)) 
    row = cursor.next()

# Output a Shapefile for each different attribute
for each_attribute in attribute_values:
    # Check to see if FC exists
    strEmptyFC = "each_attribute"
    print "Checking to see if feature class exists..."
    if arcpy.Exists(strEmptyFC) :
        print strEmptyFC + " exists."
    else:
        print "Creating feature class..."
        outFC = strWS + "\\"  + each_attribute
        print outFC
        arcpy.Select_analysis (inFC, outFC, "'%s' = 'each_attribute'" %strAtt)

del strWS, inFC, cursor, row, attribute_values

I think it has to do with the where clause in the select statement.

Answer 1

It is indeed a problem with your where clause. With each iteration you are looking for the string "each_attribute" in your table, instead of the variable's value.

Try this for your select code:

arcpy.Select_analysis (inFC, outFC, '"{0}" = \'{1}\''.format (strAtt, each_attribute))

Your SQL uses single quotes instead of double quotes for the field name, while I've always used double quotes. Fiddle with that part as needed.