Adding attachments to feature with ArcPy

Question

I was trying to add some pictures as attachments to my features in a feature class in a .mdb with ArcPy. I'm fairly new to this, so I was just playing with some test data and I modified the demo codes from ArcGIS tutorial like this:

# encoding: utf-8
import arcpy
import _csv
import os
import sys

arcpy.env.workspace = "F:/全国省级、地市级、县市级行政区划shp/全国省级、地市级、县市级行政区划shp/New Personal Geodatabase.mdb"
input = "F:/New Personal Geodatabase.mdb/Province"
inputField = "OBJECTID"
matchTable = r"F:\matchtable.csv"
matchField = "OBJECTID"
pathField = "Picture"
picFolder = r"F:\MGS"

writer = _csv.writer(open(matchTable, "wb"), delimiter=",")
writer.writerow([matchField, pathField])

for file in os.listdir(picFolder):
    if str(file).find(".jpg") > -1:
        writer.writerow([str(file).replace(".jpg", ""), file])

del writer

arcpy.EnableAttachments_management(input)
arcpy.AddAttachments_management(input, inputField, matchTable, matchField, pathField, picFolder)

(Because I'm Chinese, so the file name contained Chinese character. However, in other applications this file name worked with no problem)

Then I got error like this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "F:/���ֿμ��͹�������/ʵϰ/ArcPy Sandbox/AutomateScript/BatchAddAttribute.py", line 29, in <module>
    arcpy.AddAttachments_management(input, inputField, matchTable, matchField, pathField, picFolder)
  File "F:\ArcGIS 10.2.1\Engine10.2\arcpy\arcpy\management.py", line 124, in AddAttachments
    raise e
arcgisscripting.ExecuteError: ERROR 000228: Cannot open the dataset.
Failed to execute (AddAttachments).

ArcGIS version is 10.2

Any idea why?

Answer 1

I suspect half your problem is you're trying to match up an objectID to an image name..

writer.writerow([str(file).replace(".jpg", ""), file])

You can't join an OBJECTID (long integer) to a text field so you're going to need a different field. I personally don't use CSV files as I find them to fail at the worst possible time - and you can never trust you've accessed all the records.. perhaps this might work for you:

import arcpy, os, sys

arcpy.env.workspace = "F:/全国省级、地市级、县市级行政区划shp/全国省级、地市级、县市级行政区划shp/New Personal Geodatabase.mdb"
input = "F:/New Personal Geodatabase.mdb/Province"
inputField = "PicName" # field in your feature class that has the name of the picture
matchTable = r"F:\matchtable.dbf"
matchField = "PicName" # field in your new table that has the name of the picture
pathField = "Picture"
picFolder = r"F:\MGS"

arcpy.CreateTable_management("F:\\","MatchTable.dbf")
arcpy.AddField_management(matchTable,matchField,"TEXT",field_length = 255)
arcpy.AddField_management(matchTable,pathField,"TEXT",field_length = 255)

if arcpy.Exists(matchTable):
    try:
        arcpy.Delete_management(matchTable)
    except:
        arcpy.AddError("Unable to purge existing table")
        sys.exit(-1)

with arcpy.da.InsertCursor(matchTable,[matchField,pathField]) as ICur:
    for file in os.listdir(picFolder):
        fName, fExt = os.path.splitext(file)
        if fExt.upper() == '.JPG':
            arcpy.AddMessage(file)
            ICur.insertRow([fName,os.path.join(picFolder,file)])

arcpy.EnableAttachments_management(input)
arcpy.AddAttachments_management(input, inputField, matchTable, matchField, pathField, picFolder)