passose.blogg.se

In this chapter, we are looking at Excel files. Python packages are collected in an online directory called PyPI, which stores the packages along with their metadata and any documentation. This is so your computer doesn’t get bloated with every Python library available. Because many libraries serve a niche purpose, you have to explicitly install them. Python comes with a set of frequently used libraries.

Do you remember importing the csv and json packages in Chapter 3? Those were packages in the standard library—they came with your Python installation. Up until this point, we were using Python libraries that came standard with Python when you installed it. We assure you in most cases, the person who generated the file with the data inside simply did not identify the importance of also releasing it in a machine-readable format.īefore we can continue, we need to learn how to install external Python packages (or libraries). When you have to extract data from files in these more difficult formats, you might think there is someone out there who hates you, because it can be painful. The data is available in PDF and Excel format.

The examples we use in this chapter and the next contain data from UNICEF’s 2014 report on The State of the World’s Children. Although the processes are more difficult, the end goal is the same: to extract the useful information and put it into a usable format in Python. In this chapter, we will begin to learn about processes which will vary greatly each time you perform them.

So far in this book, the solutions you’ve learned about for importing data have been pretty standard. In this chapter and the next, we will look at two example file typesâ€≎xcel files and PDFs—and provide some generic instructions to follow if you encounter a different file type. This is because some data formats were made to be machine readable, while others, such as the ones we’ll look at next, were meant to be interacted with through desktop tools.

Unlike the previous chapter’s data, not all the data in this and the following chapter will easily import into Python without a little work.