ArcPy update a field based on the value of another field containing wildcard text

Question

I have a file geodatabase feature class (fc). I want to update Field 1 (Colour) with text where Field 2 (Description) contains a certain word. ie. Field 2 contains the string 'the ball is red and small' so...

if Field 2 contains %red% then update Field 1 with the value 'Red'

In ArcPy I've tried this to no avail:

import arcpy
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
fc = r"D:\Pathtodata\database.gdb\featureclass"

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fc, ['Colour', 'Description']) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        if row[1] == '%red%':
            row[0] = 'Red'
        elif row[1] == '%blue%':
            row[0] = 'Blue'
        cursor.updateRow(row)
print("Finished")

When I run this, no updates are made. It cannot seem to use wildcards. It only seems to work with exact matches ie:

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fc, ['Colour', 'Description']) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        if row[1] == 'the ball is red and small':
            row[0] = 'Red'
....

etc. etc.

How can I make this work?

I'm working in a standalone Python script, in PyCharm, not in ArcGIS.

Answer 1

The syntax is a bit different:

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fc, ['Colour', 'Description']) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
      if 'red' in str(row[1]):
           row[0] = 'red' 
      elif 'orange' in str(row[1]):
           row[0] = 'orange' 
      else:
           row[0] = 'no_color'
      cursor.updateRow(row)

Also it might be a good idea to convert the row to lower_case:

 str(row[1]).lower()

Or it will not match red and Red and so on

As per comment, if you want more foolproof design, you can use regex match. It really depends on the complexity of the problem.

import re
if re.search("^patternhere$", row[1]:
   row[0] = 'Red'

For more regex search: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7879600/using-anchors-in-python-regex-to-get-exact-match

Answer 2

import arcpy
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
fc = r"D:\Pathtodata\database.gdb\featureclass"

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fc, ['Colour', 'Description']) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        if 'red' in row[0]:
            row[0] = 'Red'
        elif 'blue' in row[0]:
            row[0] = 'Blue'
        cursor.updateRow(row)
print("Finished")

You can wildcard using regex or fnmatch: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11427138/python-wildcard-search-in-string