I have a group layer that I have populated with a collection of feature layers. When I right-click on the group layer and select "Zoom to Layer" the view zooms so that I can see the full extents of all of the feature layers. I'd like to be able to do this using ArcPy, but so far I haven't been able to determine the proper method. The group layer doesn't have its own Extents, so I can't set the Extent of the current data frame using groupLayer.getExtent(). Is there a simple way to replicate what the right-click menu does?
There may also be a case where I want to zoom to only the visible layers inside of the group, so a method that allows me to do that would be even better (seeing as my first case is a special case of this one with all layers set to visible).
The code below shows how I am currently trying to go about this. Essentially I am looping through some collection of datasets that have already been brought into my mxd file to export pictures. The groupLyrDict and zoomLyrDict dictionaries contain the layer objects for the group layers that I am using. They are created elsewhere in the code and work correctly, so for instance zoomLyrDict[tuple([dataset,"Groupview"])] returns a group layer that contains several feature layers.
datasetNames = ["ds1", "ds2", "ds3"]
for dataset in datasetNames:
groupLyrDict[tuple([dataset, "Groupview"])].visible = True
df.extent = zoomLyrDict[tuple([dataset,"Groupview"])].getExtent() # causes an error because the group layer does not have an Extent object
arcpy.RefreshActiveView()
arcpy.mapping.ExportToTIFF(mxd, outDir + "\\my_view.tif", "PAGE_LAYOUT", resolution = 300, tiff_compression = "NONE")
groupLyrDict[tuple([dataset, "Groupview"])].visible = False
