Feature Class to Feature Class using os.walk, fnmatch and renaming

Question

I have a script for traversing a directory tree and finding shapefiles with a particular name. The issue I'm having is that the shapefiles are named improperly for databasing i.e. 20160527_Whatever.shp (total of 24 characters). The script is supposed to remove the date from the beginning, and add it to the end for the filename. Currently it outputs the same filename over and over again and fails. Snippet of the portion failing below (haven't done a lot of string parsing)

import arcpy, os, fnmatch
from arcpy import env

env.overwriteOutput=True

rootDir = "whatever directory"
search = "whatever criteria"
outGDB = "whatever GDB"

shpLst = []
for root, dirs., files in os.walk(rootDir, topdown=True):
    for filename in fnmatch.filter(files, search):
        shpLst.append(os.path.join(root, filename))

for fc in shpLst:
    outName= (os.path.basename(shpLst[0][-30:-4]) + "_" + os.path.basename(shpLst[0][9:-31]))
   arpy.FeatureClassToFeatureClass_management(fc, outGDB, outName, "", "", "")
   print outName + " sent to " + outGDB

As I said, the above outputs the same exact file name every time, so I'm guessing it's a problem with the way I'm parsing the string?

Answer 1

By using os.path.basename(shpLst[0]), you are specifying the first list item in the shpLst list. This will be the same every time. Instead, you need to perform string manipulation with the fc variable.

Slicing a basename can be problematic if the number of characters is different for any of the basenames. The os module's split method is what is needed in your case. Here is a simplified example:

import os

out_workspace = r'/path/to/out_workspace'

shpLst = [r'/path/to/20160527_Whatever.shp',
          r'/path/to/20140125_Whatever.shp',
          r'/path/to/20140125_Whatever.shp']

for fc in shpLst:
    parts = os.path.basename(fc).split(".")[0].split("_")
    outName = parts[1] + "_" + parts[0] + ".shp" 
    final = os.path.join(out_workspace, outName)