Read specific columns from a csv file with csv module?

Question

I\'m trying to parse through a csv file and extract the data from only specific columns.

Example csv:

ID | N         


        

Answer 1

import csv
from collections import defaultdict

columns = defaultdict(list) # each value in each column is appended to a list

with open('file.txt') as f:
    reader = csv.DictReader(f) # read rows into a dictionary format
    for row in reader: # read a row as {column1: value1, column2: value2,...}
        for (k,v) in row.items(): # go over each column name and value 
            columns[k].append(v) # append the value into the appropriate list
                                 # based on column name k

print(columns['name'])
print(columns['phone'])
print(columns['street'])

With a file like

name,phone,street
Bob,0893,32 Silly
James,000,400 McHilly
Smithers,4442,23 Looped St.

Will output

>>> 
['Bob', 'James', 'Smithers']
['0893', '000', '4442']
['32 Silly', '400 McHilly', '23 Looped St.']

Or alternatively if you want numerical indexing for the columns:

with open('file.txt') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    reader.next()
    for row in reader:
        for (i,v) in enumerate(row):
            columns[i].append(v)
print(columns[0])

>>> 
['Bob', 'James', 'Smithers']

To change the deliminator add delimiter=" " to the appropriate instantiation, i.e reader = csv.reader(f,delimiter=" ")