arcpy.SelectLayerByLocation_management gives ERROR 000368?

Question

I have 2 shape files. One is a polygon while other is polyline. I need to select all the polylines that are completely inside the polygon. However this doesnot seem to work in any way.

NewLinks = "NewLinks.shp"
Buffer = "Buffer.shp"
Buffer1 = "Buffer1.shp"
arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(Buffer, Buffer1) 
arcpy.SelectLayerByLocation_management(NewLinks, "COMPLETELY_WITHIN", Buffer1, "", "NEW_SELECTION", "NOT_INVERT")

Error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "C:\Program Files (x86)\ArcGIS\Desktop10.5\ArcPy\arcpy\management.py", line 7860, in SelectLayerByLocation
raise e
arcgisscripting.ExecuteError: Failed to execute. Parameters are not valid.
ERROR 000368: Invalid input data.
Failed to execute (SelectLayerByLocation).

Does this answer help? https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/67017/43 — Richard Morgan, Oct 23 '17 at 21:18
@RichardMorgan I added that and tried, it shows the same error. — pnkjmndhl, Oct 23 '17 at 21:19

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 23 '17 at 21:33

SelectLayerByLocation_management input must be a feature layer, so make one from the shp file first, then pass that into the method.

NewLinks = "NewLinks.shp"
Buffer = "Buffer.shp"
arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(NewLinks, 'newlinks_lyr') 
arcpy.SelectLayerByLocation_management('newlinks_lyr', "COMPLETELY_WITHIN", Buffer, "", "NEW_SELECTION", "NOT_INVERT")

Also, I tend to be very explicit with paths to any files; your code may now complain it can't find those .shp files.

arcpy.SelectLayerByLocation_management gives ERROR 000368?

1 Answers1