Updating Fields with values from Python list using ArcPy UpdateCursor

Question

I'm currently trying to update the fields of a shapefile, with a list I've compiled outside of the arcpy environment. Trying both UpdateCursor which I can't seem to get to work, and FieldCalculator. FieldCalculator just updates it with "P[2]"

photoname = []

for p in shp_list:
    name = p[2]
    photoname.append(name)

    # arcpy.CalculateField_management(out_shapefile,"PhotoName","'p[2]'","PYTHON_9.3")

I've also tried:

updt_cursor = arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(out_shapefile, fields)
for row in updt_cursor:
    val = str(row[0])
    for p in shp_list:
        if val in p:
            row[2] = p_name
            updt_cursor.updateRow(row)

And UpdateCursor is blank.

I know I could create a .txt from the list, then update the fields with the line in the .txt file with InsertCursor, but I feel like there should be a more efficient way to do this. For context, I'm creating point shapefiles of the X/Y from the exif data, and want to fill in the corresponding image name.

Answer 1

To fix your field calculator statement change it to:

arcpy.CalculateField_management(out_shapefile,"PhotoName","'" + p[2] + "'","PYTHON_9.3")