NATO Alphabet Generator

100 Days of Code: The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp for 2023

By Dr. Angela Yu

Day 26 of 100: List Comprehension and the NATO Alphabet

Project Specs

Using the Pandas Library, develop an application that converts a word to the (International) Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, more commonly known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, used for clearly communicating the letters of the Roman alphabet.

This application is written with Python 3.11.

Main Features

This simple application asks the user to enter a word for NATO translation, and is engaged in the PyCharm run console.

Usage & Requirements

This project uses one library package:

• Pandas

Workflow

Data is read from the nato_phonetic_alphabet.csv file using the Pandas .read_csv() library function and stored into a dictionary:

data = pandas.read_csv("nato_phonetic_alphabet.csv")
nato_dict = {row.letter:row.code for (index, row) in data.iterrows()}

Then we create a generate_phonetic() function that captures the user input and then using a try / except / else block, we attempt to translate the word into its appropriate NATO alphabet parts:

def generate_phonetic():
    word = input("Please enter a word for NATO Translation: ").upper()
    try:
        result = [nato_dict[letter] for letter in word]
    except KeyError:
        print("Sorry, only letters in the alphabet please.")
        generate_phonetic()
    else:
        print(result)

If the user entered any input other than letters (such as spaces or numbers), the program captures this error, informs the user of the issue, and then restarts the program from the beginning.

Getting Started

All the commands below should be typed into the Python terminal of your IDE (I use PyCharm for my Python Development).

First, clone the repository from Github and switch to the new directory:

$ git clone git@github.com:shelbyblanton/nato-alphabet.git

Then open the project in PyCharm.

In the main.py file, click on the word pandas in the import statement at the top of the page. Then click on the red exclamation point and click Install Package Pandas to load the library:

Setup is complete!

Click Run in PyCharm to see the app in action.

Author & Credits

Programmed by M. Shelby Blanton under the instructional guidance of Dr. Angela Yu via Udemy.com.