Best way to read and write data on google colab? - python

I'm making an application that shows the correlation between your daily habits and your mood. Because python has so many of the components I need and I wan't this to be web based (also I'm not worried about the front end right now) I'm leaning towards using colab.
The problem is the session storage. I know how to work with pre-existing data but I'm totally unfamiliar with storing collected data with python. It's a light weight app and I'd like to use the panda's library to visualize the data.
The point is: I don't know how I should store the data that will be input on a daily basis on colab for future use. Of course, every time I run the colab, data collected will be cleared. What's the best way to store data from each use on colab? Can I create a csv file on my google drive and read / write to that file and if so what's the best method?
If colab seems like a bad option, I'll use javascript to collect the data & d3.js to visualize but I'd like to stick to colab if I can so I don't have to stand up my own webpage.

Since you want it to be web-based, you can use Heroku Student Plan with Github Education or PythonAnywhere. Because the colab session will stop after 12 hours and it is a headache to run it again.
In case, you still want to use Colab, one way is to save data into a file and keep it in Google Drive. In this case,
Saving of data can be automated. But you'll need to get access token for Google Drive every session. Check Example I/O notebook
Other methods are generally inconvenient

Related

Swamped with real time data and tasked with building a database

I work for a power company, and have been tasked with building a database. I have a pretty beginner/intermediate understanding level of python, and can fuddle decently with MSSQL. They have procured Azure for this project, and I am completely lost of how to start this task.
Here is one of the sources of data that I want to scrape every minute.
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/docroot/tradingPage.html - this is a complete overview of the Alberta power market in real time.
Ideally, I would want to be able to scrape this data and other sources, and then modify it to fit into in a certain format and push it onto the SQL server.
Do I need virtual machines that are just looping over python scripts? Or do I need managed instances? This data also then needs to be able to be queried right after it is scraped. Eventually this data may feed machine learning algorithms (I don't know jack about that either but I have been told it should play friendly with that type of enviornment).
Just looking to see if anyone has any insight in how you would approach this, and can tell me what I clearly don't know and haven't thought of. Any insight is truly appreciated.
Thanks!

How to update a plotly graph with new data in Python?

I am using Chart Studio. How do I update my graph with new data, without losing previously uploaded data? I cannot upload everything all at once every time, because uploads are "limited to 524.288 KB". So I have to upload incrementally. Is this possible? By the way, fileopt='extend' does not work in the new version upgrade, but that is the type of functionality I am looking for.
I did not discover how to extend traces however I did find out how to get around the upload limit. The method involves generating charts on github pages which can be used to create iframes, without file size limits. This is an effective workaround for me. More information here: https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-create-a-plotly-visualization-and-embed-it-on-websites-517c1a78568b

How to best share updated html and csv files created in a Juypter notebook with colleagues

What exactly I am doing: updating a predictive model with new data bi-weekly, and then updating the csv file and plotly graphs (html files) that contain the new predictions
What my problem is: right now I am sharing these updated predictions either ad hoc over email or by uploading the files to google drive (or my often both). Neither is a very good solution so I am looking for a better way to programmatically update these files and share them with my colleagues
My ideal solution: a link I could share that would open a web page with all of this data updated. The link could either be something that you can't find without being given the exact link or something that required a username and password to access
Decent enough with python for data analysis and visualization but no experience deploying web apps. Thanks in advance

Import data from excel spreadsheet to django model

I'm building a website that'll have a django backend. I want to be able to serve the medical billing data from a database that django will have access to. However, all of the data we receive is in excel spreadsheets. So I've been looking for a way to get the data from a spreadsheet, and then import it into a django model. I know there are some different django packages that can do this, but I'm having a hard time understanding how to use these packages. On top of that I'm using python 3 for this project. I've used win32com for automation stuff in excel in the past. I could write a function that could grab the data from the spreadsheet. Though what I want figure out is how would I write the data to a django model? Any advice is appreciated.
Use http://www.python-excel.org/ and consider this process:
Make a view where user can upload the xls file.
Open the file with xlrd. xlrd.open_workbook(filename)
Extract, create dict to map the data you want to sync in db.
Use the models to add, update or delete the information.
If you follow the process, you can learn a lot of how loading and extracting works and how does it fits with the requirements. I recommend to you first do the step 2 and 3 in shell to get more quicker experiments and avoid to be uploading/testing/error with a django view.
Hope this kickoff base works for you.
Why don't you use django-import-export?
It's a widget that allows you to import excel files from admin section.
It's very easy to install, here you find the installation tutorial, and here an example.
Excel spreadsheets are saved as .csv files, and there are plenty of examples and explanations on how to work with them, such as here and here, online already.
In general, if you are having difficulty understanding documentation or packages, my advice would be to search for specific examples or see if whatever you are trying to do has already been done. Play with it to get a working understanding, and then modify it to fit your needs.

Automating IBM SPSS Data Collection survey export?

I'm so sorry for the vague question here, but I'm hoping an SPSS expert will be able to help me out here. We have some surveys that are done via SPSS, from which we extract data for an internal report. Right now the process is very cumbersome and requires going to the SPSS Data Collection Interviewer Server Administration page and manually exporting data from two different projects (which takes hours at a time!). We then take that data, massage it, and upload it to another database that drives the internal report.
My question is, does anyone out there know how to automate this process? Is there a SQL Server database behind the SPSS data? Where does the .mdd file come in to play? Can my team (who is well-versed in extracting data from various sources) tap into the SQL Server database behind SPSS to get our data? Or do we need some sort of Python script and plugin?
If I'm missing information that would be helpful in answering the question, please let me know. I'm happy to provide it; I just don't know what to provide.
Thanks so much.
As mentioned by other contributors, there are a few ways to achieve this. The simplest I can suggest is using the DMS (data management script) and windows scheduler. Ideally you should follow below steps.
Prerequisite:
1. You should have access to the server running IBM Data collection
2. Basic knowledge of windows task scheduler
3. Knowledge of DMS scripting
Approach:
1. Create a new DMS script from the template
2. If you want to perform only data extract / transformation, you only need input and output data source
3. In the input data source, create/build the connection string pointing to your survey on IBM Data collection server. Use the data source as SQL
4. In the select query: use "Select * from VDATA" if you want to export all variables
5. Set the output data connection string by selecting the output data format as SPSS (if you want to export it in SPSS)
6. run the script manually and see if the SPSS export is what is expected
7. Create batch file using text editor (save with .bat extension). Add below lines
cd "C:\Program Files\IBM\SPSS\DataCollection\6\DDL\Scripts\Data Management\DMS"
Call DMSRun YOURDMSFILENAME.dms
Then add a line to copy (using XCOPY) the data / files extracted to the location where you want to further process it.
Save the file and open windows scheduler to schedule the execution of this batch file for data extraction.
If you want to do any further processing, you create an mrs or dms file and add to the batch file.
Hope this helps!
There are a number of different ways you can accomplish easing this task and even automate it completely. However, if you are not an IBM SPSS Data Collection expert and don't have access to somebody who is or have the time to become one, I'd suggest getting in touch with some of the consultants who offer services on the platform. Internally IBM doesn't have many skilled SPSS resources available, so they rely heavily on external partners to do services on a lot of their products. This goes for IBM SPSS Data Collection in particular, but is also largely true for SPSS Statistics.
As noted by previous contributors there is an approach using Python for data cleaning, merging and other transformations and then loading that output into your report database. For maintenance reasons I'd probably not suggest this approach. Though you are most likely able to automate the export of data from SPSS Data Collection to a sav file with a simple SPSS Syntax (and an SPSS add-on data component), it is extremely error prone when upgrading either SPSS Statistics or SPSS Data Collection.
From a best practice standpoint, you ought to use the SPSS Data Collection Data Management module. It is very flexible and hardly requires any maintenance on upgrades, because you are working within the same data model framework (e.g. survey metadata, survey versions, labels etc. is handled implicitly) right until you load your transformed data into your reporting database.
Ideally the approach would be to build the mentioned SPSS Data Collection Data Management script and trigger it at the end of each completed interview. In this way your reporting will be close to real-time (you can make it actual real-time by triggering the DM script during the interview using the interview script events - just a FYI).
All scripting on the SPSS Data Collection platform including Data Management scripting is very VB-like, so for most people knowing VB, it is very easy to get started and it is documented very well in the SPSS Data Collection DDL. There you'll also be able to find examples of extracting survey data from SPSS Data Collection surveys (as well as reading and writing data to/from other databases, files etc.). There are also many examples of data manipulation and transformation.
Lastly, to answer your specific questions:
Yes, there is always an MS SQL Server behind SPSS Data Collection -
no exceptions. However, generally speaking the data model is way to
complex to read out data directly from it. If you have a look in it,
you'll quickly realize this.
The MDD file (short for Meta Data Document) is containing all survey meta
data including data source specifications, version history etc.
Without it you'll not be able to make anything of the survey data in
the database, which is the main reason I'd suggest to stay within the
SPSS Data Collection platform for as large part of your data handling
as possible. However, it is indeed just a readable XML file.
Note that the SPSS Data Collection Data Management Module requires a separate license and if the scripting needed is large or complex, you'd probably want base professional too, if that's not what you already use for developing the questionnaires and handling the surveys.
Hope that helps.
This isn't as clean as working directly with whatever database is holding the data, but you could do something with an exported data set:
There may or may not be a way for you to write and run an export script from inside your Admin panel or whatever. If not, you could write a simple Python script using Selenium WebDriver which logs into your admin panel and exports all data to a *.sav data file.
Then you can use the Python SPSS extensions to write your analysis scripts. Note that these scripts have to run on a machine that has a copy of SPSS installed.
Once you have your data and analysis results accessible to Python, you should be able to easily write that to your other database.

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