What are “named tuples” in Python?

Question

Reading the changes in Python 3.1, I found something... unexpected:

The sys.version_info tuple is now a named tuple:

Answer 1

What is namedtuple ?

As the name suggests, namedtuple is a tuple with name. In standard tuple, we access the elements using the index, whereas namedtuple allows user to define name for elements. This is very handy especially processing csv (comma separated value) files and working with complex and large dataset, where the code becomes messy with the use of indices (not so pythonic).

How to use them ?

>>>from collections import namedtuple
>>>saleRecord = namedtuple('saleRecord','shopId saleDate salesAmout totalCustomers')
>>>
>>>
>>>#Assign values to a named tuple 
>>>shop11=saleRecord(11,'2015-01-01',2300,150) 
>>>shop12=saleRecord(shopId=22,saleDate="2015-01-01",saleAmout=1512,totalCustomers=125)

Reading

>>>#Reading as a namedtuple
>>>print("Shop Id =",shop12.shopId)
12
>>>print("Sale Date=",shop12.saleDate)
2015-01-01
>>>print("Sales Amount =",shop12.salesAmount)
1512
>>>print("Total Customers =",shop12.totalCustomers)
125

Interesting Scenario in CSV Processing :

from csv import reader
from collections import namedtuple

saleRecord = namedtuple('saleRecord','shopId saleDate totalSales totalCustomers')
fileHandle = open("salesRecord.csv","r")
csvFieldsList=csv.reader(fileHandle)
for fieldsList in csvFieldsList:
    shopRec = saleRecord._make(fieldsList)
    overAllSales += shopRec.totalSales;

print("Total Sales of The Retail Chain =",overAllSales)