Fixing a CSV using Python

Question

I am trying to clean up the formating on a CSV file in order to import it into a database, and I'm using the following to edit it:

f1 = open('visit_summary.csv', 'r')
f2 = open('clinics.csv', 'w')

for line in f1:
    f2.write(line.replace('Calendar: ', ''))

f1.close()
f2.close()

This works fine if there is only 1 edit to make, however, I have to repeat this code 19 times in order to make all the changes required; opening and closing each file several times and having multiple placeholder fiels in order to use for intermediate steps ebtween the first and last edit). Is there a simpler way to do this? I tried adding more "f2.write(line.replace"... lines, however, this creates a final file with duplicated lines each of which has only 1 edit. I think I see my problem (I am writing each line multiple times with each edit), however, I cannot seem to find a solution. I am very new to python and am self teachign myself so any help, or direction to better resources would be appreciated.

Answer 1

There's no reason you can't do lots of things to the line before you write it:

with open('visit_summary.csv', 'r') as f1, open('clinics.csv', 'w') as f2:
    for line in f1:
        line = line.replace('Calendar: ', '')
        line = line.replace('Something else', '')
        f2.write(line)

(I also replaced open, close with the with statement)

Answer 2

f1 = open('visit_summary.csv', 'r')
f2 = open('clinics.csv', 'w')

for line in f1:
    f2.write(line.replace('Calendar: ', '').replace('String2', '').replace('String3', ''))

f1.close()
f2.close()

Will this work? Although I don't think its very "pythonic". In this case, you have to be careful about the ordering!

Answer 3

import csv
file1 = csv.DictReader(open('visit_summary.csv', 'r'))
output =[]
for line in file1:
    row= {}
    row['calender'] = line.replace('Calender:','')

row['string'] = line.replace('string','')
    output.append(row)

file = csv.DictReader(open('clinics.csv', 'w'))
fileWriter = csv.writer(file , delimiter=",",quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)

Header = ['something' , 'something']
fileWriter.writerow(Header)
for x in output:
temp = [x['something'],x['something']]
fileWriter.writerow(temp)
file.close()