ArcGIS Python

ArcGIS users, developers, and anyone with an ArcGIS Online subscription or ArcGIS Enterprise, leverage the Python ecosystem to automate their workflows and perform repetitive tasks by writing Python scripts.

In this tutorial, you will learn how the ArcGIS Python API can help in scripting and automating in Web GIS.

ArcGIS API for Python

The ArcGIS Python libraries are Python packages that include ArcPy and ArcGIS API for Python.

• Python library for spatial analysis, mapping and GIS.
• API Python is a powerful, modern and easy to use application.
• It is powered by Web GIS, with local capabilities.

Difference of ArcGIS API for Python and ArcPy

API for Python designed to script against an organization either online or enterprise, and is meant to be used with web services and resources in a web GIS.

ArcPy is designed to work primarly with local data in the Geoprocessing realm and for repetitive tasks needed for map documents. These are two distinct packages and that is importent to know moving forward.

Python in ArcGIS Pro

Python is a free, open-source programming language that is powerful and easy to learn.

Esri has fully embraced Python for ArcGIS and see Python as the language that fulfill the needs of the Esri user community. The advantages of Python in ArcGIS Pro:

• Easy to learn and suitable for both beginners and experts
• Highly scalable, suitable for large projects or small one-off programs known as scripts
• A large user community
• Portable, cross-platform
• Stable and mature
• Embeddable