Esri Shapefile User Attributes

Readers: For information on the parameters in this dialog that are common to all readers, see:

Writers: For information on the parameters in this dialog that are common to all writers, see:

The following table shows the attribute types that are supported.

Name

The name of the shapefile.

Type

This format supports the following field types.

Width

The width parameter controls the maximum characters that can be stored by the field. For the number type, the width parameter is the total number of characters allocated to the field, including the decimal point.

Precision

For some attribute types, controls the precision of the data and specifies the number of digits to the right of the decimal.

Index

FME supports index reading for all columns that are flagged as Indexed.

Any attribute that is indexed must be maximum 80 characters wide. Attribute names cannot contain characters that are illegal in Windows filenames.

 

Writing Attribute Indexes

Note: Writing attribute indexes requires that FME is running on a machine with ArcGIS or ArcPro installed. Additionally, 32-bit FME must be used with ArcGIS and 64-bit FME must be used with Arc Pro in order for attribute indexes to be generated. This feature is not available on non-Windows platforms.

The Shapefile writer can index shape data by attribute and produce attribute index files. These files are named as <featureClass>.<attributeName>.atx. FME attempts to index all attributes that are flagged as Indexed in the user attributes tab of the Shapefile Feature Type dialog.

Any attribute of type char or number that is indexed must be maximum 80 characters wide. Additionally, attribute names cannot contain characters that are illegal in Windows filenames.

If any attributes are flagged for indexing, FME automatically produces spatial index files for the feature type, regardless of the Write Spatial Index setting in the writer parameters dialog. For more information, see the writer parameter Esri Shapefile Writer Parameters.