Spatial join iteration in ArcPy?

Question

I'm pretty sure this is simple. I'm used to just doing a few maps at a time, and manually joining them doesn't take too much time. However, I've now managed to get myself into the situation where I have 20 infections I'm interested in. And 12 geographic areas. I'd like to create choropleth maps for each infection in each area. I don't think I can click manually through these.

I know that ArcGIS recommends this:

import arcpy

target_features = "C:/data/usa.gdb/states"
join_features = "C:/data/usa.gdb/cities"
out_feature_class = "C:/data/usa.gdb/states_cities"

arcpy.SpatialJoin_analysis(target_features, join_features, out_feature_class)

Is the standard "How to do spatial joins" I've got that to work as a one off.

What I'd like to is iterate through the shapefiles in a file location (for each infection), join them to a shapefile (for the geographic area), save it as a new shapefile in a new location with a name like infection_area.shp

import arcpy,os


shpworkspace = r"S:\somestuff\maps\CSV Source file"
arcpy.env.workspace = shpworkspace
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
shplist = arcpy.ListFiles("*.shp")
join_file = r"S:\somestuff\maps\areaname.shp"
pleth = r"S:\somestuff\maps\shpfile_areaname.shp"

#join shapefiles
for shpfile in shplist
arcpy.SpatialJoin_analysis(target_file, join_file, pleth)

I'm having a complete blank (as I'm new to the world of loops and python) on how to say "for each shpfile in shplist, do a spatial join to the join file, write it as pleth".

I've got a feeling I need to use os and split shpfile to create a name and location for the joined shapefile to be saved as.

I tried to build this in a model iterator but that nearly broke me.

I'm almost certain this has been replicated as a question, but how do I write a for loop that will do what I need?

(join a file in location a, to another in location b, write the output as partfile1name_partfile2name.shp to location b, repeat for all shapefiles in location a)

Solution:

import arcpy,os


#sets the workspace
shpworkspace = r"S:\somestuff\maps\CSV Source file"
arcpy.env.workspace = shpworkspace
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
featureclasses = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses() #gets the feature class names from the workspace you set earlier

#the name of the template map
join_file = r"S:\somestuff\maps\areaname.shp"

# Join polygons to points
# This joins all .shp files in the workspace to the defined point file

for fc in featureclasses:
    name = fc.replace(".shp","_ward.shp") #create a name for the output
    arcpy.SpatialJoin_analysis(join_file,fc, name) #same join for each

I had to change the order to (join_file, fc,name)

Answer 1

To get the list of shapefiles:

featureclasses = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses() #gets the feature class names from the workspace you set earlier

To iterate the feature classes:

for fc in featureclasses:
    name = fc.replace(".shp","namejoin.shp") #create a name for the output
    arcpy.SpatialJoin_analysis(fc, join_file, name) #same join for each

There are other ways you might change the name. I assumed that you wanted to output to the workspace.

Answer 2

The answer!

import arcpy,os

#sets the workspace
shpworkspace = r"S:\somestuff\maps\CSV Source file"
arcpy.env.workspace = shpworkspace
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
featureclasses = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses() #gets the feature class names from the workspace you set earlier

#the name of the template map
join_file = r"S:\somestuff\maps\areaname.shp"

# Join polygons to points
# This joins all .shp files in the workspace to the defined point file

for fc in featureclasses:
    name = fc.replace(".shp","_ward.shp") #create a name for the output
    arcpy.SpatialJoin_analysis(join_file,fc, name) #same join for each

I had to change the order to (join_file, fc,name)