Add support for pathlib.Path objects to arcpy

[ScottDavis]

pathlibseems to be the preferred method for working with system paths in Python 3. We've started using it in place of `os.path` in our office recently and really like it. However, we've run into problems with using it with arcpy. For example:

workspace = pathlib.Path('C:\some path') \ 'anotherfolder' \ 'connection.sde' with arcpy.EnvManager(workspace=workspace): pass

Throws this error: "RuntimeError: Object: Error in accessing environment "

To work around this, we end up wrapping all of our Path object with str(). For example:

workspace = str(pathlib.Path('C:\some path') \ 'anotherfolder' \ 'connection.sde') with arcpy.EnvManager(workspace=workspace): pass

It would be great if arcpy (Pro version) handled these Path objects natively!

[GISTeam4]

This would be much appreciated. Going into Python 3 we want to make good use of the new stuff like Pathlib and f-strings.

[BlakeTerhune]

When using a path created from pathlib, arcpy.da.SearchCursor() returns

RuntimeError: 'in_table' is not a table or a featureclass

If the path is formatted with str() it works fine. Hopefully there's a way the cursor, and anything else that's relevant, can accept native objects from pathlib. Please see this relevant postUsing pathlib with SearchCursor

[JoeBorgione]

@BlakeTerhune- having read you other post earlier, what is the advantage of pathlib?

[BlakeTerhune]

@JoeBorgioneI found a nice summaryhere. Also see theofficial documentation相比之下,从操作系统模块相关工具的路径e.

[ShaunWalbridge]

使用pathlib路径是一个μch nicer experience than plain strings and os.path anipulations. We are considering this work, but do estimate this to be a larger change, because of the number of different places that we currently explicitly pass only strings and expect the objects to be strings without further inspection.

[BlakeTerhune]

Thank you for the consideration@ShaunWalbridge!

[EthanSchaefer]

It seems to me that one (partial?) solution would be to wrap each function/method so that any passed object with a __fspath__ method is converted to the result of calling that method. This is essentially the same logic behind os.fspath(), which returns arbitrary strings unchanged, even if they couldn't possibly represent a path. Of course, it sequences of paths must also be covered, that could be accommodated, too. But if there are more complicated scenarios that I haven't anticipated, they may be harder to support.

Incidentally, the basic approach I outlined is how I deal with this problem (at an abstract level) when generating scripts on the fly and passing them via propy.bat.

[PhilippNagel1]

Is there any progress on this? It's quite annoying to be stuck with legacy path handling from Python 2, or always having to manually convert paths to strings, just because arcpy still does not support pathlib almost 3 years after this idea was posted.