Creating map documents based on similar feature class selection

Question

I wondering if something like this is possible. I would like to create a PDF output using a pre-established map template. The tricky part is I want to create maps in batch by adding (what will usually be 2)feature classes as layers to a data frame in the map document. These feature classes have similar names, the only difference is one of the names is preceded by "buffer_". The feature classes will then be symbolized. I am very new to arcpy mapping and seems like this may be possible however, I am stumped as to how to do this. The limited code I have so far (which doesn't run properly) looks as follows:

import arcpy, os, fnmatch

from arcpy import env


mapTemplate = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r"template location")
try:
df = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mapTemplate)[1]
print df
arcpy.env.workspace = r"file geodatabase"
fc = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()
for fcs in fc:
    name = fcs.getValue().replace("Buffer_","")
    for i in os.listdir("file geodatabase"):
        if fnmatch.fnmatch(i, name):    
            arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(fcs, "fc_layer")
            layer = arcpy.mapping.Layer("fc_layer")
            arcpy.mapping.AddLayer(df, layer + fcs, "AUTO_ARRANGE")
            mapTemplate.save()

except Exception, e:
import traceback, sys
tb = sys.exc_info()[2]
print "Line %i" % tb.tb_lineno
print e.message

I know this is no where close but I am having trouble even using the .getValue statement for the feature classes. Thanks for any suggestions or help you can provide.

Answer 1

The getValue method belongs to cursors- http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//018v00000050000000. That said, you could also try using re.search rather than stripping "Buffer_" if you're including those files in your search anyway. You can retrieve feature class names using describe as well, e.g.

desc = arcpy.Describe(fcs)
name = desc.name

Refer to this documentation as well for exporting to pdf - http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00s300000027000000