Dynamic Text in ArcMap 10.0 and arcpy - getting user name in specific format

Question

I need to put in a specific text into a text element. The initials of the user who built the map.

With arcpy I am trying to set the text element with dynamic text. If I put

<dyn type="user"/> 

in the user text element it gives me, correctly, the user's user name. I want to use the user name in a python dictionary to put the users initials instead.

dictUserElmt = { "jperez" : "JP" }

Using arcpy to read the text of my text element, textElement.text, returns (again correctly)

u'<dyn type="user"/>'.  

How do I get the actual output of the dynamic text "jperez" so I can use my dictionary to have the text element set to "JP".

I'm sure my wording is confusing because I am confused on how to approach. Thanks.

Answer 1

Is something like below what you are looking to do? For a given username look up and return their initials from the dictionary?

>>> d = {"jperez":"JP", "cooperc":"CC"}
>>> user = "jperez"
>>> if user in d.keys():
...     inits = d[user]
...
>>> inits
'JP'

Now, that said, are you getting the author name from the MXD properties?

>>> import arcpy
>>> mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument("CURRENT")
>>> a = mxd.author
>>> print a
>>> a
u''
>>> a = mxd.author
>>> print a
Chad Cooper

If so, that has to be set by the user (you can see I got u'' on my trial before I explicitly set my name as the MXD author) and saved in the MXD I believe. In your code, you have your name as jperez, which looks like a Windows login maybe? I wonder how using the getpass module to get the current login name would work? That way you could go by those, which pretty much stay the same.

>>> import getpass
>>> getpass.getuser()
'chad'
>>>