Parsing a multi-line data file with Python

python

Solution

this should do the trick. I split the data you have into a list of cases each containing there lines of your data. Then I used regular expression spiting to split by the field names. After that I put the list of key value pairs into a dictionary so that it's easy for you to loop through the cases and access any field values using the dictionary. I print out the contents of rows just to show the data structure.

code

from pprint import pprint
from collections import OrderedDict
import re

data = """Police Response: 11/6/2012 1:34:06 AM   Incident Desc: Traffic Stop OFC:    Received: 11/6/2012 1:34:06 AM
Disp: PCHK  Location: CLEAR LAKE RD&GREEN HILL RD
Event Number: LLS121106060941   ID: 60941   Priority: 6 Case No:
Police Response:    Incident Desc: Theft    OFC:    Received: 11/6/2012 1:43:35 AM
Disp: CSR   Location: SCH BLACHLY
Event Number: LLS121106060943   ID: 60943   Priority: 4 Case No:
Police Response: 11/6/2012 1:47:47 AM   Incident Desc: Suspicious Vehicle(s)    OFC:        Received: 11/6/2012 1:47:47 AM
Disp: FI    Location: KIRK RD&CLEAR LAKE RD
Event Number: LLS121106060944   ID: 60944   Priority: 6 Case No: """

lines = data.splitlines()
cases = ['\n'.join(lines[i:i+3]) for i in range(0, len(lines), 3)]
pattern = '(Police Response|Incident Desc|OFC|Received|Disp|Location|Event Number|ID|Priority|Case No):'
rows = []
for case in cases:
    pairs =  re.split(pattern, case)[1:]
    rows.append(OrderedDict((pairs[i*2], pairs[i*2+1]) for i in range(10)))

for i, row in enumerate(rows):
    print '============== {} =============='.format(i)
    pprint(row.items())

output:

============== 0 ==============
[('Police Response', ' 11/6/2012 1:34:06 AM   '),
 ('Incident Desc', ' Traffic Stop '),
 ('OFC', '    '),
 ('Received', ' 11/6/2012 1:34:06 AM\n'),
 ('Disp', ' PCHK  '),
 ('Location', ' CLEAR LAKE RD&GREEN HILL RD\n'),
 ('Event Number', ' LLS121106060941   '),
 ('ID', ' 60941   '),
 ('Priority', ' 6 '),
 ('Case No', '')]
============== 1 ==============
[('Police Response', '    '),
 ('Incident Desc', ' Theft    '),
 ('OFC', '    '),
 ('Received', ' 11/6/2012 1:43:35 AM\n'),
 ('Disp', ' CSR   '),
 ('Location', ' SCH BLACHLY\n'),
 ('Event Number', ' LLS121106060943   '),
 ('ID', ' 60943   '),
 ('Priority', ' 4 '),
 ('Case No', '')]
============== 2 ==============
[('Police Response', ' 11/6/2012 1:47:47 AM   '),
 ('Incident Desc', ' Suspicious Vehicle(s)    '),
 ('OFC', '        '),
 ('Received', ' 11/6/2012 1:47:47 AM\n'),
 ('Disp', ' FI    '),
 ('Location', ' KIRK RD&CLEAR LAKE RD\n'),
 ('Event Number', ' LLS121106060944   '),
 ('ID', ' 60944   '),
 ('Priority', ' 6 '),
 ('Case No', ' ')]

Problem

Original source