CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-2.7csv
Fylke
Fylke

Reputation: 1836

Can you use csv.DictReader without a file?

I have some comma-separated input I want to parse into a dictionary, so csv.DictReader seemed like a good fit. However, the input is already in string form and not a file as the interface to csv.DictReader wants.

Is there a way to use csv.DictReader directly with a string?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1847

Answers (2)

Martijn Pieters
Martijn Pieters

Reputation: 1122082

You can use any iterable producing lines, it doesn't just have to be a file object. You can split your string into a list of lines with str.splitlines():

for row in csv.DictReader(inputtext.splitlines()):
    print row

Demo:

>>> import csv
>>> demostring = '''\
... foo,bar,baz
... 42,Monty,Python
... 38,Ham,Spam
... '''
>>> for row in csv.DictReader(demostring.splitlines()):
...     print row
... 
{'foo': '42', 'baz': 'Python', 'bar': 'Monty'}
{'foo': '38', 'baz': 'Spam', 'bar': 'Ham'}

Upvotes: 5

falsetru
falsetru

Reputation: 369094

You can use StringIO (or io.BytesIO / io.StringIO):

>>> import StringIO
>>> import csv
>>>
>>> f = StringIO.StringIO(u'''field1,field2,field3
... 1,2,3
... 4,5,6
... 7,8,9
... ''')
>>>
>>> for row in csv.DictReader(f):
...     print row
...
{'field2': '2', 'field3': '3', 'field1': '1'}
{'field2': '5', 'field3': '6', 'field1': '4'}
{'field2': '8', 'field3': '9', 'field1': '7'}

Upvotes: 5

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