Geodatabase Feature Class properties

Summary

The Describe function returns the following properties for geodatabase feature classes. The Feature Class, Geodatabase Table, Editor Tracking Dataset, Table, and Dataset property groups are also supported.

For a geodatabase feature class, the Describe dataType property returns a value of "FeatureClass".

Properties

Property	Explanation	Data Type
areaFieldName (Read Only)	The name of the geometry area field.	String
geometryStorage (Read Only)	Returns the geometry field storage. Binary—Esri Binary storage LOB—Esri LOB storage WKB—OGC Well Known Binary storage ST—Spatial Type storage SDO—Oracle Spatial Type storage PostGIS—PostgreSQL / PostGIS storage MSSQLGeometry—SQLServer / GEOMETRY storage MSSQLGeography—SQLServer / GEOGRAPHY storage Note: Returns the storage type for enterprise geodatabase feature classes only; for all other feature classes, returns an empty string.	String
isCompressed (Read Only)	Returns True if the feature class is compressed. For more details on geodatabase compression see Compress file geodatabase data.	Boolean
lengthFieldName (Read Only)	The name of the geometry length field.	String
representations (Read Only)	A list of Describe objects for the representations associated with the feature class.	Describe

Code sample

Geodatabase feature class properties example

The following stand-alone script displays the geodatabase feature class properties:

import arcpy

# Create a Describe object from the GDB Feature Class
#
desc = arcpy.Describe("C:/data/chesapeake.gdb/chesapeake/bayshed_1")

# Print GDB FeatureClass properties
#
print("Area Field Name  : " + desc.areaFieldName)
print("Length Field Name: " + desc.lengthFieldName)