It’s a common task for database administrators to go through a giant list of data with thousands of entries. Normally these entries aren’t structured in any format so passing them into a database takes a bit of formatting. The common data format would be a CSV (comma separated values) which can be imported into a database or Excel spreadsheet. There’s many ways to go about converting lists of data into CSV’s but this guide will cover 2 methods.

Method 1: For loop

1. Create a new python script and import any necessary modules

   #!/usr/local/bin/python3
   import sys
   import os
   

2. Depending how you call the list of data entries, create a function that iterates through all the entries and outputs a csv formatted row.

   csv = [data1, data2, data3, data4, data5]
   csv_row = ""
   for item in csv:
   if type(item) = str:
      csv_row += "\"" + item + "\", "
   else:
      csv_row += str(item) + ","
   print(csv_row)
   

3. Data should be outputted like so:

   "data1","data2","data3","data4","data5"
   

Method 2: Import the built-in Python CSV module

1. Import python csv module

   #!/usr/local/bin/python3
   import sys
   import os
   import csv
   

2. Create a function that creates a csv file with the data imported. Here is an example

   with open('eggs.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile:
    spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=' ',
                            quotechar='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam'] * 5 + ['Baked Beans'])
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam', 'Lovely Spam', 'Wonderful Spam'])