incisive

incisive is a tiny library for handling CSV in Python. It's a wrapper for the csv module.

Usage

• You can read a csv file like this:

  >>> iris = read_csv("data/iris.csv")
  >>> iris.next()
  {'petal_length': 1.4,
   'petal_width': 0.2,
   'sepal_length': 5.1,
   'sepal_width': 3.5,
   'species': 'setosa'}
  

read_csv returns a generator. Note that incisive, by default, tries to guess the type of the columns.

• Writing a CSV file can be done in two ways:

1. with a list of dictionaries:

   >>> data = [{'name': 'Lancelot', 'actor': 'John Cleese', 'color': 'blue'},
              {'name': 'Galahad', 'actor': 'Michael Palin', 'color': 'yellow'}]
   
   >>> write_csv('bridge.csv', ('name', 'actor', 'color'), data=data)
   

(the keys are the field names of the CSV file.)

2. or with just a list of rows:

   >>> rows = [('Lancelot', 'John Cleese', 'blue'),
           ('Galahad', 'Michael Palin', 'yellow')]
   
   >>> write_csv('bridge.csv', ('name', 'actor', 'color'), rows=rows)
   

Note that this second method requires that your field names correspond exactly to the elements of your rows.

Features

• Simple API
• Guess the types when it's possible
• Accept functions to specify the types