arcsmith.ws

arcsmith.ws

Workspace

Helpers for setting up geodatabase workspaces inside 'Tool.execute'.

• Create a file geodatabase with automatic parent folder creation
• Get a workspace path for intermediate outputs, switching between memory and scratch GDB

Functions of the ws module

init_gdb

Creates a file geodatabase at the specified location, creating the parent folder if it does not already exist.

init_gdb(folder, gdb_name)

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
folder	str or Path	required	Folder in which to create the geodatabase.
gdb_name	str	required	Name of the geodatabase, without the .gdb extension.

Returns

str: absolute path to the created .gdb.

Examples

# Create a geodatabase
gdb = arcsmith.ws.init_gdb(r"C:/Projects/Output", "results")
# C:/Projects/Output/results.gdb

# Create and set as the arcpy workspace in one line
arcpy.env.workspace = arcsmith.ws.init_gdb(folder, gdb_name)

---

temp_space

Returns a workspace path for intermediate outputs, either the in-memory workspace or the session scratch geodatabase.

temp_space(use_memory=True)

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
use_memory	bool	True	If True, returns 'memory'. If False, returns arcpy.env.scratchGDB for on-disk inspection.

Returns

str: 'memory' or the absolute path to the scratch geodatabase.

Development workflow

Set use_memory=False while building a tool to inspect intermediate outputs in ArcGIS Pro. Switch back to True (the default) for production runs; no other code changes needed.

Examples

# Production: intermediates go to memory (default)
ws = arcsmith.ws.temp_space()
tmp = f"{ws}/my_intermediate"
# tmp = "memory/my_intermediate"

# Development: intermediates written to scratch GDB for inspection
ws = arcsmith.ws.temp_space(use_memory=False)
tmp = f"{ws}/my_intermediate"
# tmp = "C:/Users/.../scratch.gdb/my_intermediate"