Importing arcpy with reticulate

Question

I wish to import the arcpy library in R using reticulate.

I tried running this code in R:

library(reticulate)
use_python("C:/Python27/ArcGIS10.4")
arcpy = import("arcpy")

This gives me an error:

Error in py_module_import(module, convert = convert) : 
  object 'arcpy' not found

I'm not entirely sure how Python goes about finding its modules (apparently it searches PYTHONPATH, but I don't know where this is defined).

I do understand that the arcpy library is actually in a different folder. Doing a bit of digging, I think I found it, so I tried this in R:

arcpy = import_from_path("arcpy", path = "C:/Program Files (x86)/ArcGIS/Desktop10.4/ArcPy/arcpy")

But got the following error:

Error in py_module_import(module, convert = convert) : 
  ImportError: cannot import name 'gp'

Detailed traceback: 
  File "C:/Program Files (x86)/ArcGIS/Desktop10.4/ArcPy\arcpy\__init__.py", line 22, in <module>
    from arcpy.geoprocessing import gp

So I'm not too sure what's going on here, but I get the impression it has to do with Python or reticulate not looking in the right place for the right files?

(First) argument to `import` should probably be a string, not an object which doesn't exist. Try `import("arcpy")`. — Roman Luštrik, Apr 17 '18 at 19:18
Oops, sorry this is a transcription error. I have indeed been using `import("arcpy")`, but the problem occurs anyways — Andrew Plowright, Apr 17 '18 at 19:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 15 '18 at 02:04

2

Try adding the full path to the Python.exe file within C:/Python27/ArcGIS10.4. In addition, use required = TRUE, so reticulate know that it has to use the provided python version.

If it resides directly in that folder, then

library(reticulate)

use_python("C:/Python27/ArcGIS10.4/Python.exe", required = TRUE)

arcpy <- import("arcpy")

answered May 15 '18 at 02:04

Mikael Poul Johannesson

1,319
7
12

Thanks for your reply. This has produced a new error message: `Error in initialize_python(required_module, use_environment) : Your current architecture is 64bit however this version of Python is compiled for 32bit.` Does this mean I need to run a 32 bit version of R? – Andrew Plowright May 16 '18 at 16:50
Yes, try that, or install a 64bit version of `arcpy`. – Mikael Poul Johannesson May 16 '18 at 16:59

Importing arcpy with reticulate

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