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Add Field Alias Support for Feature Read/Write Operations

Open AlanZ-Git opened this issue 4 months ago • 4 comments

I'd like to propose adding support for field aliases when reading and writing features in GDB/MDB. Currently, field alias information is lost during processing.

AlanZ-Git avatar Aug 11 '25 06:08 AlanZ-Git

Can you show some examples @AlanZ-Git ? I'm unfamiliar with field aliases. Does GDAL support them? By which API?

sgillies avatar Aug 13 '25 02:08 sgillies

I am not sure if its a ArcGIS feature because I have been using ArcGIS and ArcGIS Pro since I start to work. I was using arcpy to operate vector and raster data. Sorry for not familiar about GDAL.

When a feature class is saved in gdb/mdb database, its fields class has the attribute name alias. If this feature was exported as a shapefile, it will lost field alias too.

Document of arcpy about field

Image Image

AlanZ-Git avatar Aug 15 '25 14:08 AlanZ-Git

Just a guess, this is possibly via OGR's GetAlternativeNameRef function (e.g. tested here). But I don't see any autotests that involve GDB with GetAlternativeNameRef, so I'm not sure if that support exits for these Esri formats.

mwtoews avatar Sep 15 '25 02:09 mwtoews

Yes, FGDB field aliases are supported by OGR, e.g. setting using SetAlternativeName ogropenfilegdblayer_write.cpp & python example.

user2856 avatar Sep 19 '25 02:09 user2856