A quick and dirty arcpy function that will iterate by features of a feature class and clip a target feature class; produces many output files

iterativeclip.py

"""Needs some work. Needs error handling (empty outputs especially) and better
output naming logic.
"""
import arcpy, os

source_polys = r'path to shapefile to be clipped here'
clip_polys = r'path to shapefile whose features will be used for the clipping here'

def iterclipbyfeatures(source_polys, clip_polys, clip_id='FID',
                           output_prefix='', output_suffix=''):
    """Iteratively select by location using each feature in clippolys and 
    clipping the features within the source_polys. Will result in an output
    for each feature class within the clippolys.
    
    Places output in current working directory
    
    Parameters:
        source_polys : str
            string of polygon feature class to extract features from
        clippolys : str
            string of polygon feature class for which each feature will be used
            as the clipping features
        clip_id : str
            The field name containing unique IDs for which each output file
            will be named.
        output_prefix : str
            self-explainatory
        output_suffix : str
            self-explanatory (I don't know it's spelled so I'll try two spellings
            and maybe one of them is correct!)
            
    """
    clip = arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(clip_polys)
    source = arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(source_polys)
    featurecount = arcpy.GetCount_management(clip)
    with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(clip_polys, clip_id) as cursor:
        for i, row in enumerate(cursor):
            print 'Processing: {} of {}'.format(str(i+1), featurecount)
            if type(row[0]) == int or type(row[0]) == float:
                where = '"{}" = {}'.format(clip_id, str(row[0]))
            else:
                where = '"{}" = {}'.format(clip_id, "'{}'".format(row[0]))
            print where
            arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management(clip, 'NEW_SELECTION', where)
            curclip = arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(clip)
            arcpy.SelectLayerByLocation_management(source, 'HAVE_THEIR_CENTER_IN',curclip)
            outputname =  output_prefix + str(row[0]) + output_suffix + '.shp'
            arcpy.FeatureClassToFeatureClass_conversion(source, os.getcwd(), outputname)

clippolyfcbyiterpolyfc(source_polys, clip_polys)