Tab-delimited file using csv.reader not delimiting where I expect it to

csv, python, python-requests

Solution

so whats happening, well, a call to `help` may shed some light.

>>> help(csv.reader)
 reader(...)
    csv_reader = reader(iterable [, dialect='excel']
                            [optional keyword args])
        for row in csv_reader:
            process(row)

    The "iterable" argument can be any object that returns a line
    of input for each iteration, such as a file object or a list.  The
    optional "dialect" parameter is discussed below.  The function
    also accepts optional keyword arguments which override settings
    provided by the dialect.

so it appears that `csv.reader` expects an iterator of some kind which will return a line, but we are passing a string which iterates on a char bases which is why its parsing character by character, one way to fix this would be to generate a temp file, but we don't need to, we just need to pass any iterable object.

note the following, which simply splits the string to a list of lines, before its fed to the reader.

import csv
import requests

r = requests.get('http://vote.wa.gov/results/current/export/MediaResults.txt') 
data = r.text
reader = csv.reader(data.splitlines(), delimiter='\t')
for row in reader:
    print row

this seems to work.

I also recommend using `csv.DictReader` its quite useful.

>>> reader = csv.DictReader(data.splitlines(), delimiter='\t')
>>> for row in reader:
...      print row
{'Votes': '417141', 'BallotName': 'Michael Baumgartner', 'RaceID': '2', 'RaceName': 'U.S. Senator', 'PartyName': '(Prefers Republican Party)', 'TotalBallotsCastByRace': '1387059', 'RaceJurisdictionTypeName': 'Federal', 'BallotID': '23036'}
{'Votes': '15005', 'BallotName': 'Will Baker', 'RaceID': '2', 'RaceName': 'U.S. Senator', 'PartyName': '(Prefers Reform Party)', 'TotalBallotsCastByRace': '1387059', 'RaceJurisdictionTypeName': 'Federal', 'BallotID': '27435'}

basically it returns a dictionary for every row, using the header as the key, this way we don't need to keep track of the order but instead just the name making a bit easier for us ie `row['Votes']` seems more readable then `row[4]`...

Problem

Original source