Error when creating insert cursor in ArcPy?

Question

I've written several scripts that copy data from MS Access db into a new, empty ESRI Geodatabase. I've pretty much copied the code and changed it for each table -- the first two scripts have worked as expected, but the third is throwing an error on the line used to create the Insert Cursor.

All of the variables are storing correctly at the top of the script, but the Insert Cursor is never created.

Error Message:

Runtime error Traceback (most recent call last):

File "", line 49, in File "c:\program files (x86)\arcgis\desktop10.1\arcpy\arcpy__init__.py", line 1005, in InsertCursor return gp.insertCursor(dataset, spatial_reference)

File "c:\program files (x86)\arcgis\desktop10.1\arcpy\arcpy\geoprocessing_base.py", line 383, in insertCursor self._gp.InsertCursor(*gp_fixargs(args, True)))

RuntimeError: ERROR 999999: Error executing function.

Code:

#Import modules, environment settings
import arcpy
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True

# Database connection variables
geodatabase = 'P:/GIS_Development/ArcGIS Database Design/Landowner.gdb/Parcels'
accessDatabase = 'Y:/Database/LANDOWNER/NewLandowner.mdb/TblParcels'

#Create cursor for ACCESS Database and New Landowner GDB
accessCursor = arcpy.SearchCursor(accessDatabase)

# Create a variable that stores the value for column in a given row in the access table

for accessRow in accessCursor:

    parcelID   = accessRow.getValue('Parcel_ID')
    flag       = accessRow.getValue('Flag')
    agreeID    = accessRow.getValue('Agreement_ID')
    agreeStat  = accessRow.getValue('AgreementStatus')
    ownerType  = accessRow.getValue('Owner_Type')
    add1       = accessRow.getValue('Parcel_Address1')
    city       = accessRow.getValue('Parcel_City')
    county     = accessRow.getValue('Parcel_County')
    state      = accessRow.getValue('Parcel_State')
    zipCode    = accessRow.getValue('Parcel_Zip')
    acreage    = accessRow.getValue('Acreage')
    landClass  = accessRow.getValue('Land_Class')
    mapGrid    = accessRow.getValue('Map_Grid')
    parcelNum  = accessRow.getValue('Parcel_Num')
    parcelCom  = accessRow.getValue('Parcel_Comments')
    enterRes   = accessRow.getValue('Entry_Restrict')
    enterCom   = accessRow.getValue('Entry_Comments')
    contacted  = accessRow.getValue('Contact_Made')
    appStatus  = accessRow.getValue('ApprovalStatus')
    owner      = accessRow.getValue('Owner')

    # "Paste" the stored value from the access table into the new geodatabase
    gdbCursor = arcpy.InsertCursor(geodatabase)
    row = gdbCursor.newRow()

    if state:
        state = state.upper()

    #Fill out fields with variables that are storing MS Access data
    row.Parcel_ID            = parcelID
    row.Flag                 = flag
    row.Agreement_ID         = agreeID
    row.Agreement_Status     = agreeStat
    row.Owner_Type           = ownerType
    row.Address_Line_1       = add1
    row.City                 = city
    row.County               = county
    row.State                = state
    row.Zip_Code             = zipCode
    row.Acreage              = acreage
    row.Land_Classification  = landClass
    row.Map_Grid             = mapGrid
    row.Parcel_Number        = parcelNum
    row.Parcel_Comments      = parcelCom
    row.Entry_Restrictions   = enterRes
    row.Entry_Comments       = enterCom
    row.Contact_Made         = contacted
    row.ApprovalStatus       = appStatus

    # Insert new row into Geodatabase
    gdbCursor.insertRow(row)        

Answer 1

Python isn't really the right tool for the job here. If I were you, I'd do this with Featureclass To Featureclass or Append, there is little to no benefit of doing this in Python when a geoprocessing tool exists to already do this and will run faster than a Python script.

Answer 2

I'm thinking that the line "accessRow = accessCursor.next()" is not needed. This was how you got your row object at 9.3 arggisscripting. Now at arcpy this is not needed. From what I remember before the cursor would return an enumeration and now they return a list. Now we don't while through we just say for x in list.

Hopefully some of our more pythonista bretheren on GIS.se can correct or update my statements.

Hope it helps.

Check this out.

Answer 3

Thanks Roy for responding to it, I luckily found a solution to the problem. Just so it helps others that may make same mistake as i did, here's the issue and solution:

I had posted a comment earlier about the same error I had got. The reason for my error was that I wanted to create a new polyline file by connecting some points in a point shapefile. Earlier the polyline was did not exist. I wanted to create a new one with insertcursor. The fact that the file was non-existent caused the problem. Lot of googling gave me answer hidden here:

NIM060202 - Functions that have an input data parameter such as Describe, ListFields, SearchCursor and several others, all fail with a "ERROR 999999: Error executing function." if the data does not exist.

In my case, it was insertcursor that caused the problem. It went into finding gdal16.dll and various gdalplugins for some reason. But as soon as I gave it an empty shapefile, it stopped complaining and did the trick for me.