• Chapter 13

– File Handling
∗ Opening Files for Reading
∗ Opening Files for Writing and Updating
∗ Deleting Files
– File Types
∗ File with txt Extension
∗ File with json Extension
∗ Changing JSON to Dictionary
∗ Changing Dictionary to JSON
∗ Saving as JSON File
∗ File with csv Extension
∗ File with xlsx Extension
∗ File with xml Extension

Chapter 13
File Handling
So far we have seen different Python data types. We usually store our data
in different file formats. In addition to handling files, we will also see different
file formats(.txt, .json, .xml, .csv, .tsv, .excel) in this section. First, let us get
familiar with handling files with common file format(.txt).
File handling is an import part of programming which allows us to create, read,
update and delete files. In Python to handle data we use open() built-in function.
# Syntax
open('filename', mode) # mode(r, a, w, x, t,b) could be to read, write, update
• “r” - Read - Default value. Opens a file for reading, it returns an error if
the file does not exist
• “a” - Append - Opens a file for appending, creates the file if it does not
exist
• “w” - Write - Opens a file for writing, creates the file if it does not exist
• “x” - Create - Creates the specified file, returns an error if the file exists
• “t” - Text - Default value. Text mode
• “b” - Binary - Binary mode (e.g. images)

Opening Files for Reading

The default mode of open is reading, so we do not have to specify ‘r’ or ‘rt’.
I have created and saved a file named reading_file_example.txt in the files
directory. Let us see how it is done:
f = open('./files/reading_file_example.txt')
print(f) # <_io.TextIOWrapper name='./files/reading_file_example.txt' mode='r' encoding='UTF

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As you can see in the example above, I printed the opened file and it gave some
information about it. Opened file has different reading methods: read(), readline,
readlines. An opened file has to be closed with close() method.
• read(): read the whole text as string. If we want to limit the number of
characters we want to read, we can limit it by passing int value to the
read(number) method.
f = open('./files/reading_file_example.txt')
txt = f.read()
print(type(txt))
print(txt)
f.close()
# output
<class 'str'>
This is an example to show how to open a file and read.
This is the second line of the text.
Instead of printing all the text, let us print the first 10 characters of the text file.
f = open('./files/reading_file_example.txt')
txt = f.read(10)
print(type(txt))
print(txt)
f.close()
# output
<class 'str'>
This is an
• readline(): read only the first line
f = open('./files/reading_file_example.txt')
line = f.readline()
print(type(line))
print(line)
f.close()
# output
<class 'str'>
This is an example to show how to open a file and read.
• readlines(): read all the text line by line and returns a list of lines
f = open('./files/reading_file_example.txt')
lines = f.readlines()
print(type(lines))
print(lines)
f.close()

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# output
<class 'list'>
['This is an example to show how to open a file and read.\n', 'This is the second line of th
Another way to get all the lines as a list is using splitlines():
f = open('./files/reading_file_example.txt')
lines = f.read().splitlines()
print(type(lines))
print(lines)
f.close()
# output
<class 'list'>
['This is an example to show how to open a file and read.', 'This is the second line of the
After we open a file, we should close it. There is a high tendency of forgetting
to close them. There is a new way of opening files using with - closes the files by
itself. Let us rewrite the the previous example with the with method:
with open('./files/reading_file_example.txt') as f:
lines = f.read().splitlines()
print(type(lines))
print(lines)
# output
<class 'list'>
['This is an example to show how to open a file and read.', 'This is the second line of the

Opening Files for Writing and Updating

To write to an existing file, we must add a mode as parameter to the open()
function:
• “a” - append - will append to the end of the file, if the file does not it
creates a new file.
• “w” - write - will overwrite any existing content, if the file does not exist it
creates.
Let us append some text to the file we have been reading:
with open('./files/reading_file_example.txt','a') as f:
f.write('This text has to be appended at the end')
The method below creates a new file, if the file does not exist:
with open('./files/writing_file_example.txt','w') as f:
f.write('This text will be written in a newly created file')

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Deleting Files
We have seen in previous section, how to make and remove a directory using os
module. Again now, if we want to remove a file we use os module.
import os
os.remove('./files/example.txt')
If the file does not exist, the remove method will raise an error, so it is good to
use a condition like this:
import os
if os.path.exists('./files/example.txt'):
os.remove('./files/example.txt')
else:
print('The file does not exist')

File Types
File with txt Extension
File with txt extension is a very common form of data and we have covered it in
the previous section. Let us move to the JSON file

File with json Extension

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. Actually, it is a stringified
JavaScript object or Python dictionary.
Example:
# dictionary
person_dct= {
"name":"Asabeneh",
"country":"Finland",
"city":"Helsinki",
"skills":["JavaScrip", "React","Python"]
}
# JSON: A string form a dictionary
person_json = "{'name': 'Asabeneh', 'country': 'Finland', 'city': 'Helsinki', 'skills': ['Ja

# we use three quotes and make it multiple line to make it more readable
person_json = '''{
"name":"Asabeneh",
"country":"Finland",
"city":"Helsinki",
"skills":["JavaScrip", "React","Python"]
}'''

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Changing JSON to Dictionary
To change a JSON to a dictionary, first we import the json module and then we
use loads method.
import json
# JSON
person_json = '''{
"name": "Asabeneh",
"country": "Finland",
"city": "Helsinki",
"skills": ["JavaScrip", "React", "Python"]
}'''
# let's change JSON to dictionary
person_dct = json.loads(person_json)
print(type(person_dct))
print(person_dct)
print(person_dct['name'])
# output
<class 'dict'>
{'name': 'Asabeneh', 'country': 'Finland', 'city': 'Helsinki', 'skills': ['JavaScrip', 'Reac
Asabeneh

Changing Dictionary to JSON

To change a dictionary to a JSON we use dumps method from the json module.
import json
# python dictionary
person = {
"name": "Asabeneh",
"country": "Finland",
"city": "Helsinki",
"skills": ["JavaScrip", "React", "Python"]
}
# let's convert it to json
person_json = json.dumps(person, indent=4) # indent could be 2, 4, 8. It beautifies the json
print(type(person_json))
print(person_json)
# output
# when you print it, it does not have the quote, but actually it is a string
# JSON does not have type, it is a string type.
<class 'str'>
{
"name": "Asabeneh",
"country": "Finland",

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 "city": "Helsinki",
"skills": [
"JavaScrip",
"React",
"Python"
]
}

Saving as JSON File

We can also save our data as a json file. Let us save it as a json file using the
following steps. For writing a json file, we use the json.dump() method, it can
take dictionary, output file, ensure_ascii and indent.
import json
# python dictionary
person = {
"name": "Asabeneh",
"country": "Finland",
"city": "Helsinki",
"skills": ["JavaScrip", "React", "Python"]
}
with open('./files/json_example.json', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
json.dump(person, f, ensure_ascii=False, indent=4)
In the code above, we use encoding and indentation. Indentation makes the json
file easy to read.

File with csv Extension

CSV stands for comma separated values. CSV is a simple file format used to
store tabular data, such as a spreadsheet or database. CSV is a very common
data format in data science.
Example:
"name","country","city","skills"
"Asabeneh","Finland","Helsinki","JavaScript"
Example:
import csv
with open('./files/csv_example.csv') as f:
csv_reader = csv.reader(f, delimiter=',') # w use, reader method to read csv
line_count = 0
for row in csv_reader:
if line_count == 0:
print(f'Column names are :{", ".join(row)}')
line_count += 1

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 else:
print(
f'\t{row[0]} is a teachers. He lives in {row[1]}, {row[2]}.')
line_count += 1
print(f'Number of lines: {line_count}')
# output:
Column names are :name, country, city, skills
Asabeneh is a teacher. He lives in Finland, Helsinki.
Number of lines: 2

File with xlsx Extension

To read excel files we need to install xlrd package. We will cover this after we
cover package installing using pip.
import xlrd
excel_book = xlrd.open_workbook('sample.xls)
print(excel_book.nsheets)
print(excel_book.sheet_names)

File with xml Extension

XML is another structured data format which looks like HTML. In XML the
tags are not predefined. The first line is an XML declaration. The person tag is
the root of the XML. The person has a gender attribute. Example:XML
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<person gender="female">
<name>Asabeneh</name>
<country>Finland</country>
<city>Helsinki</city>
<skills>
<skill>JavaScrip</skill>
<skill>React</skill>
<skill>Python</skill>
</skills>
</person>
For more information on how to read an XML file check the documentation
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('./files/xml_example.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
print('Root tag:', root.tag)
print('Attribute:', root.attrib)
for child in root:
print('field: ', child.tag)

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# output
Root tag: person
Attribute: {'gender': 'male'}
field: name
field: country
field: city
field: skills