Using the helper functions

The arcpy package provides a small number of helper functions to make working with spatial layer geometries and attributes easier. These helper functions are essentially wrappers for the arpcy Data Access module that support simple transfer of information between spatial layers and R data frames.

To demonstrate the helper functions, we'll set up a workspace with a copy of the California County Boundaries shapefile (available on https://data.ca.gov). A copy of this file is included with the arcpy package.

library(arcpy)

# set workspace
arcpy$env$workspace = tempdir()
arcpy$env$scratchWorkspace = tempdir()

# copy feature for example
fc = arcpy$management$CopyFeatures(system.file("CA_Counties",
  "CA_Counties_TIGER2016.shp", package = "arcpy"), "CA_Counties")

Reading attribute tables is accomplished using the function da_read.

head(da_read(fc, fields = c("FID", "NAME")))

##   FID          NAME
## 1   0        Sierra
## 2   1    Sacramento
## 3   2 Santa Barbara
## 4   3     Calaveras
## 5   4       Ventura
## 6   5   Los Angeles

Tokens are also supported by arcpy. If you have the tibble package installed, you can read geometry tokens as list columns.

da_read(fc, fields = c("OID@", "NAME", "SHAPE@TRUECENTROID"))

## Loading required namespace: tibble

## # A tibble: 58 × 3
##    `OID@` NAME          `SHAPE@TRUECENTROID`
##     <int> <chr>         <list>              
##  1      0 Sierra        <list [2]>          
##  2      1 Sacramento    <list [2]>          
##  3      2 Santa Barbara <list [2]>          
##  4      3 Calaveras     <list [2]>          
##  5      4 Ventura       <list [2]>          
##  6      5 Los Angeles   <list [2]>          
##  7      6 Sonoma        <list [2]>          
##  8      7 Kings         <list [2]>          
##  9      8 San Diego     <list [2]>          
## 10      9 Placer        <list [2]>          
## # ℹ 48 more rows

You can use da_update to modify attributes.

d = da_read(fc, fields = "NAME")
d["NAME"] = paste(d$NAME, "County, CA")
da_update(fc, d)

head(da_read(fc, fields = "NAME"))

##                       NAME
## 1        Sierra County, CA
## 2    Sacramento County, CA
## 3 Santa Barbara County, CA
## 4     Calaveras County, CA
## 5       Ventura County, CA
## 6   Los Angeles County, CA

You can also use da_update to add additional fields to a table, provided you create the field first.

d = da_read(fc, c("ALAND", "AWATER"))
d["FRACLAND"] = d$ALAND / (d$ALAND + d$AWATER)

arcpy$management$AddField(fc, "FRACLAND", "FLOAT")
da_update(fc, d["FRACLAND"])

You can use da_drop and da_insert to remove and add rows, respectively.

d = da_read(fc)
# extract second row
new.d = d[2,]
# drop second row
da_drop(fc, 2)
# add the row back
da_insert(fc, new.d)

head(da_read(fc))

## # A tibble: 6 × 20
##     FID Shape      STATEFP COUNTYFP COUNTYNS GEOID NAME   NAMELSAD LSAD  CLASSFP
##   <int> <list>     <chr>   <chr>    <chr>    <chr> <chr>  <chr>    <chr> <chr>  
## 1     0 <list [2]> 06      091      00277310 06091 Sierr… Sierra … 06    H1     
## 2     1 <list [2]> 06      083      00277306 06083 Santa… Santa B… 06    H1     
## 3     2 <list [2]> 06      009      01675885 06009 Calav… Calaver… 06    H1     
## 4     3 <list [2]> 06      111      00277320 06111 Ventu… Ventura… 06    H1     
## 5     4 <list [2]> 06      037      00277283 06037 Los A… Los Ang… 06    H1     
## 6     5 <list [2]> 06      097      01657246 06097 Sonom… Sonoma … 06    H1     
## # ℹ 10 more variables: MTFCC <chr>, CSAFP <chr>, CBSAFP <chr>, METDIVFP <chr>,
## #   FUNCSTAT <chr>, ALAND <dbl>, AWATER <dbl>, INTPTLAT <chr>, INTPTLON <chr>,
## #   FRACLAND <dbl>