Comparing two shapefiles based on ID and spatial

Question

I have two shapefiles that contain position information for individuals, one is their reported location (line segments) and the other is their high-frequency recorded location (point data); they have an ID field that is common between them. What I am looking to do is identify the reported locations in the larger recorded data set with a spatial selection. The problem is my data is so condensed that I cannot do a simple select by location. There is too much overlap of individual locations. I also have over 1,000 individual IDs so I don't want to individually query each ID.

What I am looking for is a way to use possibly a cursor to go through each unique ID, query only the records in each table that share that ID, then do the spatial selection. I am very new to cursors and scripting in general so I don't know if a cursor can be used for two tables. (This may be irrelevant but for this process I can convert my line data to point data if having the same type of shapefiles is important.)

(Removed previous code that I am no longer using)

I am also unaware if maybe Make Query Table will work for this (I have never used it).
Thanks!

UPDATE: Here is a new code that I worked on with a fellow GIS person. GOOD NEWS! After leaving ArcGIS alone for a while, my code ran! It went as expected, but only did one iteration on one ID. The iteration should be implied in the Cursor as far as I know, or is there a line of code I'm missing that tells the Cursor to repeat for all IDs?

rows = arcpy.SearchCursor("hmb_logbook_2009")
for row in rows:
    whereClause = '"trip_id" = ' + str(row.trip_id)
    arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management("hmb_logbook_2009", "currentLines", whereClause)
    arcpy.SelectLayerByLocation_management("hmb2009", "WITHIN_A_DISTANCE", "currentLines", "1 Miles", "NEW_SELECTION")
    arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management("hmb2009", "SUBSET_SELECTION", ' "trip_id" = ' + str(row.trip_id))
    arcpy.CalculateField_management("hmb2009", "match_activity", 1)
    arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management("hmb2009", "CLEAR_SELECTION")
    arcpy.Delete_management("currentLines")
del row, rows 

UPDATE 2: So I have troubleshooted, and the reason the code only ran once is this error associated with my Make Feature Layer tool. Here is the error message: ERROR 000622: Failed to execute (Make Feature Layer). Parameters are not valid. ERROR 000628: Cannot set input into parameter in_features.
I tried putting the full address into that tool (only that one) instead of referencing the layer in the map and it works!

Answer 1

rows = arcpy.SearchCursor("hmb_logbook_2009")

It's not certain that arcpy will know how to find the file. Try specifying the full path to hmb_logbook_2009.

To debug this, put a PythonWin breakpoint on the line above, then step through your code using F10. You can also type the commands manually into the interactive window. This will give you a better feel for where the errors are occurring.

(Depending on what you're trying to do, it may make more sense to put the whereClause in the searchCursor, but that's a separate issue.)

Keep with it, you'll work it out eventually and it'll be worth it in the end!

Answer 2

Might be worth trying something with a relate... then a sub-selection by location. Would avoid having to code... (i.e. create a relationship between the two FC's, do a spatial selection, create a layer from the spatial selection, then use the relate to narrow the selection down to only those records that share the ID AND that are within your spatial selection).

Alternatively as above suggestion by Stephen Lead... break the code down into parts and run them in the interactive window. I also sometimes cheat and build as far as I can in Model Builder, then convert to a Python script, and work with it from there.