Arcpy: Insert a text if filed is empty

Question

I want to run a python code that, if 4 fields are empty, insert in the first of them a text. The fields are all designed to contain text. My code is:

import arcpy
import xlrd 
import numpy 
import pdb
arcpy.env.workspace = r"Directory"
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
shape = r"C:\Directory\Shapefiles.shp"
fields = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']
cursor = arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(shape,fields)
for row in cursor:
    if row[0] == None:
        if row[1]== None:
            if row[2]== None:
                if row[3]== None:
                    row[0] = 'Not_Officially_Recorded'
    cursor.updateRow(row)
arcpy.FeatureClassToShapefile_conversion(shape, r'Anotherdirectory')
print('Done')

Anyway, the code runs suspiciously quickly and after I look at it, I see that nothing has been done. So what may the error be?

Answer 1

It would be more efficient to use and with your if statements, or how I would do it would be to check if the length of the list of your row values is 0 using a filter (using all is another good option here). This is how I would do it:

import arcpy

arcpy.env.workspace = r"C:\Directory"
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
shape = r"C:\Directory\Shapefiles.shp"
fields = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']
with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(shape,fields) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        if len(filter(None, row)) == 0:  
            row[0] = 'Not_Officially_Recorded'
            cursor.updateRow(row)

arcpy.FeatureClassToShapefile_conversion(shape, 'Anotherdirectory')
print('Done')

You also have a few modules you're importing that don't appear to be used...You also only need to use the raw string syntax for full paths, doing it for a simple string with no special characters isn't necessary.