Turning off Labels using ArcPy

Question

I am outputting a set of maps with various layers and baselayers. On some of these I need to turn off the labels to reduce the noise and to see the baselayer with no obstructions.

I cant seem to figure out a way to turn off the labels for only the selected output maps. I have tried multiple variations of this code to no avail

lyrList = ['fields']
for lyr in lyrList:
     if lyr.supports("LABELCLASSES"):
          lyr = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, lyr, df)[0]
          lyr.showLables = False
          arcpy.RefreshActiveView()

edit: to show lyrList is strings

Answer 1

The Layer class of arcpy.mapping does not have a property named showLables [sic] but it does have one named showLabels. I would change the code that you have presented to be:

for lyr in lyrList:
     if lyr.supports("LABELCLASSES"):
          lyr = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, lyr, df)[0]
          lyr.showLabels = False  # spelling of property name corrected here
arcpy.RefreshActiveView()

In addition to correcting the spelling of the property name, I also moved arcpy.RefreshActiveView() outside of loop so that the display only needs to be refreshed once, instead of once for every layer that supports label classes.

Answer 2

I suspect lyrList is a collection of name-strings (e.g. lyrList = ["Layer1", "Layer2",]). If this is the case, the string-type item doesn't work here if lyr.supports("LABELCLASSES"):.

Alternatively, lyrList is a collection layer Objects (e.g. lyrList = [<map layer u'SomeLayerName'>, <map layer u'SomeOtherLayerName'>] , then redefining a lyr object with lyr = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, lyr, df)[0] doesn't work, as the "lyr" parameter should be a string (even if it worked, it's redundant).

Here is a snippet to ellaborate:

import arcpy

mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r"CURRENT")### "CURRENT" or some path, e.g. r"C:\Project\Project.mxd"
df = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd, "Layers")[0]
lyrList = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, "Build*", df)

print "Layer-List  = ", lyrList  ########## A simply list of things
print "Zeroth-Elm  = ", lyrList[0] ######## the zeroth element of the list
print "Zeroth-Type = ", type(lyrList[0])### type of the zeroth element

print "---"

for lyr in lyrList:
    print "Process '" + lyr.name + "' layer"
    if lyr.supports("LABELCLASSES"):
        ### not needed ---> lyr = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, lyr, df)[0]
        lyr.showLabels = False
        print "\tShow-Labels = " + str(lyr.showLabels)

arcpy.RefreshActiveView()

Shown here: