This project will help cleanup data for VIA LINK, the non-profit that runs the 211 system and call centers for the New Orleans-based region of Louisiana.

Initial setup

install Python

You must have Python 3 installed. You can download it here.

If you are using Windows, be sure to select the "Add Python to PATH" option

You can confirm it is installed correctly by running python3 --version in a terminal or command prompt.

create and activate a Python virtual environment

This step is optional, but if you have more than one project using Python, it is recommended.

A virtual environment isolates the dependencies of each project, which is helpful when working with mulitple projects with different depenencies (or different versions of the same dependency).

For macOS or Linux

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

For Windows

py -m venv env
.\env\Scripts\activate

Note that you need to activate the virutal environment before running a script but you only need to create the virtual envrionment once.

install the dependencies

In Python, dependencies are often installed using pip

You can install all the dependencies for this project by running:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the scripts

The basic format looks like python cleanup.py script_name --inputfile1 ~/path/to/input.csv

For example:

# the keep-calm-with-covid script only requires one input file
python cleanup.py --debug keep-calm-with-covid --input "/tmp/VL 4.29 Call Report.csv"

# the all-covid-calls script requires 2 files
python cleanup.py --debug all-covid-calls --vialink-input ~/Downloads/VL\ 4.29\ Disaster\ Call\ Report\ .csv --232-input ~/Downloads/232-HELP.csv"

If you want to see the basic usage you can run python cleanup.py and for a specifc command you can use the --help flag

python cleanup.py all-covid-calls --help

Also, you can use the --debug flag to view debug logs