How to count rows of interest from a field in an attribute table using arcpy.da.Cursor?

Question

How to count the number of records from a field 'COVER' that is neither 'woods' and neither 'orchards'?

fileName = 'C:/gispy/data/ch17/parkCopy3.shp'
fields = ['COVER', 'FID']

count = 0 .

try:

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fileName, fields) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        if row[0] != 'woods' or row[0] != 'orchards':
            count = row[0].count
            cursor.updateRow(row)

    del cursor
print 'Number of records with other cover types:{0}'.format(count)

except:

Answer 1

import arcpy
arcpy.env.workspace = "C:/gispy/data/ch17"
fileName = 'parkCopy3.shp'
fields = ['COVER', 'FID']
myList = ['woods', 'orchards']
count = 0
with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fileName, fields) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        if row[0] not in myList:
            count += 1

print 'Number of records with other cover types:{0}'.format(count)

1. Don't forget to import arcpy at the beginning of the code.
2. Use List to iterate the values (Cover and orchards)
3. If you want just search and print the result, Use SearchCursor. You don't need to use UpdateCursor.
4. I removed try- except because your code was not complete. Maybe you don't need to use try-except in your code.

Answer 2

You don't need a cursor to do that, GetCount() returns what you want. If you're using a database instead of a shapefile, this approach will probably be faster too.

arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management("C:/gispy/data/ch17/parkCopy3.shp", "selection", "COVER not in ('woods', 'orchards')")
print arcpy.GetCount_management("selection").getOutput(0)

For Desktop: http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/latest/tools/data-management-toolbox/get-count.htm

For Pro: http://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/tool-reference/data-management/get-count.htm

Answer 3

An alternative approach is to select the rows you want to count and then run the summary statistics tool. These could be called from a python script or knocked together using model builder in half the time.