PrintIn this walkthrough, our main goal is to demonstrate how to build a small software application with a reasonably complex GUI in Python with the help of PyQt5 and the QT Designer. The software is supposed to work as a stand-alone application but also as a script tool inside ArcGIS Pro. Furthermore, while part of its functionality will require arcpy, we also want it to provide some functionality if arcpy is not available. Therefore, this walkthrough will also show how one can check whether a Python script is run inside ArcGIS or not, and whether arcpy is available or not. Finally, since the software will query some geographic web services that return JSON code, the walkthrough will be a continuation of what we started in Section 2.3 where you learned about Python packages that support dealing with URLs and web requests as well as working with JSON code.
Note: Unfortunately there currently is an issue with the newest versions of ArcGIS Pro (version 2.8 and above) that will make the application from this walkthrough crash when it is run as a script tool inside ArcGIS. We have not yet been able to find a workaround for this issue that does not require re-designing the GUI of the app. The issue seems to be related to specific QT5 widgets (menu bar, status bar, etc.) used in the program. You will still be able to run the software as a stand-alone application though if you have one of these versions.