Note: This is the third post in the Bulk Tag Generation in Python series.
Last time we went over how to open and read an Excel file. This time we'll actually use that to read in the data file which had all the information we needed to make tags. Here's a sample of the data:
Team ID Delegate ID Delegate Name Delegate Email Delegate Phone Gender Age Delegate Level Accommodation Request Accommodation Status Head Delegate
PSI-S-0001 PSI-D-0001 Hasnain Lakhani some-email-address@gmail.com 123456789 Male 19 University No Yes
Someone coming from a C++ background might have chosen to start by making a class and having variables such as team id, delegate id, and so on. But that's a lot of boilerplate code to write just to get started.
I hate boilerplate code. Quoting Wikipedia,
In computer programming, boilerplate is the term used to describe sections of code that have to be included in many places with little or no alteration. It is more often used when referring to languages which are considered verbose, i.e. the programmer must write a lot of code to do minimal jobs.
Let's see how we can do it in Python.
# This is at the top of the file
DELEGATE_FIELDS = "Team ID|Delegate ID|Delegate Name|Delegate Email|Delegate Phone|Gender|Age|Delegate Level|Accommodation Request|Accommodation Status|Head Delegate"
# This is the class we're making
class Thing:
def __init__(self, sheet, line, fields):
fields = [x.lower().replace(" ", "_") for x in fields.split("|")]
for col, field in enumerate(fields):
self.__dict__[field] = sheet.cell(line, col).value
# And this is how we get all the data
things = [Thing(sheet, x, DELEGATE_FIELDS) for x in xrange(1, maxno)]
Let's work through this step by step.
First, we have the DELEGATE_FIELDS constant, which is basically one long string (copied off the excel file) containing the column names.
Then, we create a class (You can see how good I am at picking names) and define its constructor, the __init__ method. The arguments are simple, sheet is an xlrd worksheet, line is the line number, and fields is the format specifier, which is DELEGATE_FIELDS here.
Starting off, we turn the fields parameter into a list using a list comprehension; at the same time making the names more code-friendly, e.g. "Team ID" gets converted to team_id.
Now we enumerate over all the fields. Enumerate is a nice little function, returning both the index and value so we can use them neatly, instead of for x in xrange(0, len(fields)):. So now we have the column number and the field name.
Line 11 has the real magic: We first fetch the value that we need from the excel file. Then, we're saving it in the __dict__ dictionary, in the field field. So far, so good. But, __init__ is special. Internally, all a class' variables are stored inside its __init__. So when we update that, we're basically adding a new variable into the class, at runtime. Bingo. So, once this code runs with the above data, we can do my_variable.team_id and it'll give the team ID.
The last line just runs a list comprehension to get all the rows of the Excel file into a list, for later processing.
And that's it. Just 7 lines of Python. Welcome to the power and freedom of dynamic languages.
- Hasnain