I'm trying to write some code to create a file that will write data about a "character". I've been able to write strings using:
f = open('player.txt','w')
f.write("Karatepig")
f.close()
f = open('player.txt','r')
f.read()
The issue is, how do I store something other than a string to a file? Can I convert it from a string to a value?
Files can only store strings, so you have to convert other values to strings when writing, and converting them back to original values when reading.
The Python standard library has a whole section dedicated to data persistence that can help make this task easier.
However, for simple types, it is perhaps easiest to use the json module to serialize data to a file and read it back again with ease:
import json
def write_data(data, filename):
with open(filename, 'w') as outfh:
json.dump(data, outfh)
def read_data(filename):
with open(filename, 'r') as infh:
json.load(infh)
Related
I have a list of .txt file in one folder, with names like: "image1.txt", "image2.txt", "image3.txt", etc.
I need to perform some operations for each file.
I was trying like this:
import glob
for each_file in glob.glob("C:\...\image\d+\.txt"):
print(each_file) (or whatever)
But it seems it doesn't work. How can I solve?
I think you are looking for something like this:
import os
for file in os.listdir('parent_folder'):
with open(os.path.join('parent_folder', file), 'r') as f:
data = f.read()
# operation on data
#Alternatively
for i in range(10):
with open(f'image{i}.txt', 'r') as f:
data = f.read()
# operation on data
The with operator takes care of everything to do with the file, so you don't need to worry about the file after it goes out of scope.
If you want to read and also write to the file in the same operation, use open(file, 'r+) and then the following:
with open(f'image{i}.txt', 'r+') as f:
data = f.read()
# operation on data
f.seek(0)
f.write(data)
f.truncate()
Take this answer, that I wrote.
path objects have the read_text method. As long as it can decode it, then it will read it - you shouldn't have a problem with text files. Also, since you are using windows paths, make sure to put an r before the string, like this r"C:\...\image\d+\.txt" or change the direction of the slashes. A quick example:
from pathlib import Path
for f in Path(r"C:\...\image\d+\").rglob('**/*.txt'):
print(f.read_text())
This is my first question here, I'm new to python and trying to figure some things out to set up an automatic 3D model processing chain that relies on data being stored in JSON files moving from one server to another.
The problem is that I need to store absolute paths to files that are being processed, but these absolute paths should be modified in the original JSON files upon the first time that they are processed.
Basically the JSON file comes in like this:
{
"normaldir": "D:\\Outgoing\\1621_1\\",
"projectdir": "D:\\Outgoing\\1622_2\\"
}
And I would like to rename the file paths to
{
"normaldir": "X:\\Incoming\\1621_1\\",
"projectdir": "X:\\Incoming\\1622_2\\",
}
What I've been trying to do is replace the first part of the path using this code, but it isn't working:
def processscan(scanfile):
configfile= MonitorDirectory + scanfile
with open(configfile, 'r+') as file:
content = file.read()
file.seek(0)
content.replace("D:\\Outgoing\\", "X:\\Incoming\\")
file.write(content)
However this was not working at all, so I tried interpreting the JSON file properly and replacing the key code from here:
def processscan(scanfile):
configfile= MonitorDirectory + scanfile
with open(configfile, 'r+') as settingsData:
settings = json.load(settingsData)
settings['normaldir'] = 'X:\\Incoming\\1621_1\\'
settings['projectdir'] = 'X:\\Incoming\\1622_2\\'
settingsData.seek(0) # rewind to beginning of file
settingsData.write(json.dumps(settings,indent=2,sort_keys=True)) #write the updated version
settingsData.truncate() #truncate the remainder of the data in the file
This works perfectly, however I'm replacing the whole path so it won't really work for every JSON file that I need to process. What I would really like to do is to take a JSON key corresponding to a file path, keep the last 8 characters and replace the rest of the patch with a new string, but I can't figure out how to do this using json in python, as far as I can tell I can't edit part of a key.
Does anyone have a workaround for this?
Thanks!
Your replace logic failed as you need to reassign content to the new string,str.replace is not an inplace operation, it creates a new string:
content = content.replace("D:\\Outgoing\\", "X:\\Incoming\\")
Using the json approach just do a replace too, using the current value:
settings['normaldir'] = settings['normaldir'].replace("D:\\Outgoing\\", "X:\\Incoming\\")
You also would want truncate() before you write or just reopen the file with w and dump/write the new value, if you really wanted to just keep the last 8 chars and prepend a string:
settings['normaldir'] = "X:\\Incoming\\" + settings['normaldir'][-8:]
Python come with a json library.
With this library, you can read and write JSON files (or JSON strings).
Parsed data is converted to Python objects and vice versa.
To use the json library, simply import it:
import json
Say your data is stored in input_data.json file.
input_data_path = "input_data.json"
You read the file like this:
import io
with io.open(input_data_path, mode="rb") as fd:
obj = json.load(fd)
or, alternatively:
with io.open(input_data_path, mode="rb") as fd:
content = fd.read()
obj = json.loads(content)
Your data is automatically converted into Python objects, here you get a dict:
print(repr(obj))
# {u'projectdir': u'D:\\Outgoing\\1622_2\\',
# u'normaldir': u'D:\\Outgoing\\1621_1\\'}
note: I'm using Python 2.7 so you get the unicode string prefixed by "u", like u'projectdir'.
It's now easy to change the values for normaldir and projectdir:
obj["normaldir"] = "X:\\Incoming\\1621_1\\"
obj["projectdir"] = "X:\\Incoming\\1622_2\\"
Since obj is a dict, you can also use the update method like this:
obj.update({'normaldir': "X:\\Incoming\\1621_1\\",
'projectdir': "X:\\Incoming\\1622_2\\"})
That way, you use a similar syntax like JSON.
Finally, you can write your Python object back to JSON file:
output_data_path = "output_data.json"
with io.open(output_data_path, mode="wb") as fd:
json.dump(obj, fd)
or, alternatively with indentation:
content = json.dumps(obj, indent=True)
with io.open(output_data_path, mode="wb") as fd:
fd.write(content)
Remarks: reading/writing JSON objects is faster with a buffer (the content variable).
.replace returns a new string, and don't change it. But you should not treat json-files as normal text files, so you can combine parsing json with replace:
def processscan(scanfile):
configfile= MonitorDirectory + scanfile
with open(configfile, 'rb') as settingsData:
settings = json.load(settingsData)
settings = {k: v.replace("D:\\Outgoing\\", "X:\\Incoming\\")
for k, v in settings.items()
}
with open(configfile, 'wb') as settingsData:
json.dump(settings, settingsData)
Since the Json And Pickle methods aren't working out, i've decided to save my dictionaries as strings, and that works, but they arent being read.
I.E
Dictionary
a={'name': 'joe'}
Save:
file = open("save.txt", "w")
file.write(str(a))
file.close()
And that works.
But my load method doesn't read it.
Load:
f = open("save.txt", "r")
a = f
f.close()
So, it just doesn't become f.
I really don't want to use json or pickle, is there any way I could get this method working?
First, you're not actually reading anything from the file (the file is not its contents). Second, when you fix that, you're going to get a string and need to transform that into a dictonary.
Fortunately both are straightforward to address....
from ast import literal_eval
with open("save.txt") as infile:
data = literal_eval(infile.read())
Using string.Template I want to store the values to substitute into the template in separate files that I can loop through.
Looping is the easy part. I then want to run
result = s.safe_substitute(title=titleVar, content=contentVar)
on my template. I’m just a little stumped in what format to store these values in a text file and how to read that file with python.
What you are looking for is call serialization. In this case, you want to serialize a dict, such as
values = dict(title='titleVar', content='contentVar')
There are may ways to serialize, using XML, pickle, YAML, JSON formats for example. Here is how you could do it with JSON:
import string
import json
values = dict(title='titleVar', content='contentVar')
with open('/tmp/values', 'w') as f:
json.dump(values, f)
with open('/tmp/values', 'r') as f:
newvals = json.load(f)
s = string.Template('''\
$title
$content''')
result = s.safe_substitute(newvals)
print(result)
I have json file with some data, and would like to occasionally update this file.
I read the file:
with open('index.json', 'rb') as f:
idx = json.load(f)
then check for presence of a key from potentially new data, and if key is not present update the file:
with open('index.json', mode='a+') as f:
json.dump(new_data, f, indent=4)
However this procedure just creates new json object (python dict) and appends it as new object in output json file, making the file not valid json file.
Is there any simple way to append new data to json file without overwriting whole file, by updating the initial dict?
One way to do what you're after is to write one JSON object per line in the file. I'm using that approach and it works quite well.
A nice benefit is that you can read the file more efficiently (memory-wise) because you can read one line at a time. If you need all of them, there's no problem with assembling a list in Python, but if you don't you're operating much faster and you can also append.
So to initially write all your objects, you'd do something like this:
with open(json_file_path, "w") as json_file:
for data in data_iterable:
json_file.write("{}\n".format(json.dumps(data)))
Then to read efficiently (will consume little memory, no matter the file size):
with open(json_file_path, "r") as json_file:
for line in json_file:
data = json.loads(line)
process_data(data)
To update/append:
with open(json_file_path, "a") as json_file:
json_file.write("{}\n".format(json.dumps(new_data)))
Hope this helps :)