Describe object properties (arcpy)

Summary

The Describe function returns the following properties for all Describe objects.

Properties

Property	Explanation	Data Type
baseName (Read Only)	The file base name	String
catalogPath (Read Only)	The path of the data	String
children (Read Only)	A list of sub elements	Describe
childrenExpanded (Read Only)	Indicates whether the children have been expanded	Boolean
dataElementType (Read Only)	The element type of the element	String
dataType (Read Only)	The type of the element	String
extension (Read Only)	The file extension	String
file (Read Only)	The file name	String
fullPropsRetrieved (Read Only)	Indicates whether full properties have been retrieved	Boolean
metadataRetrieved (Read Only)	Indicates whether the metadata has been retrieved	Boolean
name (Read Only)	The user-assigned name for the element	String
path (Read Only)	The file path	String

Code Sample

Describe object properties example (stand-alone script)

Display some Describe object properties for a file geodatabase.

import arcpy

# Create a Describe object
#
desc = arcpy.Describe("C:/Data/chesapeake.gdb")

# Print some Describe Object properties
#
if hasattr(desc, "name"):
    print "Name:        " + desc.name
if hasattr(desc, "dataType"):
    print "DataType:    " + desc.dataType
if hasattr(desc, "catalogPath"):
    print "CatalogPath: " + desc.catalogPath

# Examine children and print their name and dataType
#
print "Children:"
for child in desc.children:
    print "\t%s = %s" % (child.name, child.dataType)