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Learn Python 3 - Files Cheatsheet - Codecademy

The document discusses various methods for working with files in Python including opening files, reading files line by line or the entire content, writing to files, parsing JSON files to dictionaries, and using the csv module. Key methods mentioned are open(), readline(), readlines(), read(), write(), json.load(), csv.DictWriter, and more.

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hevin nichola
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58 views

Learn Python 3 - Files Cheatsheet - Codecademy

The document discusses various methods for working with files in Python including opening files, reading files line by line or the entire content, writing to files, parsing JSON files to dictionaries, and using the csv module. Key methods mentioned are open(), readline(), readlines(), read(), write(), json.load(), csv.DictWriter, and more.

Uploaded by

hevin nichola
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Cheatsheets / Learn Python 3

Files
Python File Object
A Python file object is created when a file is opened
with the open() function. You can associate this file
object with a variable when you open a file using the
with and as keywords. For example:

with open('somefile.txt') as
file_object:

You can then print the content of the file object,


file_object with print() .

print(file_object)

You might see something like this on the output


terminal:

<_io.TextIOWrapper
name='somefile.txt' mode='r'
encoding='UTF-8'>

Python Readline Method


To read only one line instead of multiple lines in a
Python file, use the method .readline() on a file
object that is returned from the open() function.
Every subsequent .readline() will extract the next line
in the file if it exists.

with open('story.txt') as
story_object:

  print(story_object.readline())

will print only the first line in story.txt .


Parsing JSON files to dictionary
JSON format is used to store key value pairs. Python’s
json module allows reading such data format and # Use json.load with an opened file
parsing it to a dictionary. The json.load function takes object to read the contents into a Python
a file object as an argument and returns the data in a dictionary.
dictionary format.

# Contents of file.json
# { 'userId': 10 }

import json
with open('file.json') as json_file:
  python_dict = json.load(json_file)
  
print(python_dict.get('userId'))
# Prints 10

Python Append To File


Writing to an opened file with the 'w' flag overwrites
all previous content in the file. To avoid this, we can
append to a file instead. Use the 'a' flag as the
second argument to open() . If a file doesn’t exist, it will
be created for append mode.

with open('shopping.txt', 'a') as


shop:

  shop.write('Tomatoes,
cucumbers, celery\n')

Python Write To File


By default, a file when opened with open() is only for
reading. A second argument 'r' is passed to it by
default. To write to a file, first open the file with write
permission via the 'w' argument. Then use the
.write() method to write to the file. If the file already
exists, all prior content will be overwritten.

with open('diary.txt','w') as
diary:

  diary.write('Special events for


today')

Python Readlines Method


Instead of reading the entire content of a file, you can
read a single line at a time. Instead of .read() which
returns a string, call .readlines() to return a list of
strings, each representing an individual line in the file.
Calling this code:

with open('lines.txt') as
file_object:
  file_data

= file_object.readlines()
print(file_data)

returns a list of strings in file_data :

['1. Learn Python.\n', '2. Work


hard.\n', '3. Graduate.']

Iterating over the list, file_data , and printing it:

for line in file_data:


  print(line)

outputs:

1. Learn Python.

2. Work hard.


Graduate.
3.

Class csv.DictWriter
In Python, the csv module implements classes to read
and write tabular data in CSV format. It has a class # An example of csv.DictWriter
DictWriter which operates like a regular writer but import csv
maps a dictionary onto output rows. The keys of the
dictionary are column names while values are actual with open('companies.csv', 'w') as
data.
csvfile:
The csv.DictWriter constructor takes two arguments.
  fieldnames = ['name', 'type']
The first is the open file handler that the CSV is being
  writer = csv.DictWriter(csvfile,
written to. The second named parameter, fieldnames ,
fieldnames=fieldnames)
is a list of field names that the CSV is going to handle.
  writer.writeheader()
  writer.writerow({'name': 'Codecademy',
'type': 'Learning'})
  writer.writerow({'name': 'Google',
'type': 'Search'})

"""
After running the above code,
companies.csv will contain the following
information:

name,type
Codecademy,Learning
Google,Search
"""

Python Read Method


After a file is opened with open() returning a file
object, call the .read() method of the file object to
return the entire file content as a Python string.
Executing the following Python code:

with open('mystery.txt') as
text_file:

= text_file.read()
  text_data
print(text_data)

will produce a string containing the entire content of


the read file:

Mystery solved.
Congratulations!

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