Creating selection in stand-alone ArcPy script?

Question

I am using ArcGIS Desktop 10.5.

I have had this work for me before, so I am confused as to what problem I am -running into now. When making a selection to copy to a new dataset in Arcpy, -here is the important part of the code:

sortoutput = 'c:/Users/srcha/Desktop/Cluster_Analysis/output/Ld_Playas_extracted1_sorted.shp'
sortedftr = 'C:/Users/srcha/Desktop/Cluster_Analysis/output/Ld_Play_extra_sort_ftr.shp'
arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(sortoutput,sortedftr)
arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management(sortedftr, selection_type="NEW_SELECTION", where_clause='"AREA_ADJ" >=0.07957')

This yields the following error:

ExecuteError: Failed to execute. Parameters are not valid. Error 000732: Layer Name of Table View: data set C:/Users/srcha/Desktop/Cluster_Analysis/output/Ld_Play_extra_sort_ftr.shp does not exist or is not supported

Failed to execute (SelectLayerByAttribute)

Answer 1

You cant create a feature layer on disk, it is stored in memory only.

Change:

sortedftr = 'C:/Users/srcha/Desktop/Cluster_Analysis/output/Ld_Play_extra_sort_ftr.shp'

To:

sortedftr = 'sortedftr_lyr'

After the selection if you can use Copy features to convert the layer to a shapefile on disk.

You dont actually need Select by attributes, this can be done with the where_clause of Make Feature Layer:

where_clause (Optional)

An SQL expression used to select a subset of features.