Programming ArcGIS with Python Cookbook - Second Edition

Creating a custom geoprocessing tool

Along with being able to execute any of the available tools in your scripts, you can also create your own custom tools, which can also be called from a script. Custom tools are frequently created to handle geoprocessing tasks that are specific to an organization. These tools can be easily shared as well.

Getting ready

In this recipe, you will learn how to create custom geoprocessing script tools by attaching a Python script to a custom toolbox in ArcToolbox. There are a number of advantages of creating a custom script tool. When you take this approach, the script becomes a part of the geoprocessing framework, which means that it can be run from a model, command line, or another script. Also, the script has access ...