ArcPy Spatial Join, use join geometry not target

Question

My goal is to create a layer of lines representing the closest street segment to a set of points.

The code:

arcpy.SpatialJoin_analysis(
    target_features=point_req,
    join_features=selected_streets,
    out_feature_class=pt_st_join_output,
    join_operation='JOIN_ONE_TO_ONE',
    join_type='KEEP_COMMON',
    match_option='CLOSEST',
    distance_field_name='CLOSEST')

Works almost perfectly, doing the join correctly but the geometry included in the table is from the target layer, points, rather than the join layer, lines.

I could use a cursor to run through the points layer and build a layer of lines by finding each row's joined ID in the lines layer. I'm hoping to avoid this out of concerns about runtime since I'd have to loop through the lines layer for each point.

It seems like there should be a more elegant way to do this.

Answer 1

If you could use Select by Attribute on the line layer with a query along the lines of "select line where streetID = point_closest_street_ID", then that selection could be exported to its own feature class if needed.

Answer 2

What I ended up doing was creating a new feature class with an insert cursor on that, creating a search cursor on the join output that contained the line OID, creating a search cursor on the lines table and looping through to build the whole thing manually.

        pts_cols = ['RequestID','Description','JOIN_FID','CLOSEST','unique_id']
        sts_cols = ['OBJECTID','SHAPE@','FULLNAME','strt_type', 'unique_id']
        ins_cols = ['RequestID','Description','pt_st_dist','fullname','strt_type','SHAPE@']

        with arcpy.da.InsertCursor(final_output, ins_cols) as ins_curs:     
            with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(in_table=actual_merge_output, field_names=pts_cols) as ptscursor:
                for ptsrow in ptscursor:
                    arcpy.AddMessage('working on ')
                    arcpy.AddMessage(ptsrow[0])
                    with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(all_streets, sts_cols) as stscursor:
                        for stsrow in stscursor:
                            if ptsrow[4] == stsrow[4]:
                                arcpy.AddMessage('found a match')
                                arcpy.AddMessage(stsrow[2])
                                ins_curs.insertRow((ptsrow[0],ptsrow[1],ptsrow[3],stsrow[2],stsrow[3],stsrow[1])) 

It's pretty ugly in my opinion but it allows for multiple matches and combines attributes from the source and the join tables,