Read specific columns from a csv file with csv module?

by

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

Example csv:

ID | Name | Address | City | State | Zip | Phone | OPEID | IPEDS |
10 | C... | 130 W.. | Mo.. | AL... | 3.. | 334.. | 01023 | 10063 |

I’m trying to capture only specific columns, say ID, Name, Zip and Phone.

Code I’ve looked at has led me to believe I can call the specific column by its corresponding number, so ie: Name would correspond to 2 and iterating through each row using row[2] would produce all the items in column 2. Only it doesn’t.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

import sys, argparse, csv
from settings import *

# command arguments
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='csv to postgres',\
 fromfile_prefix_chars="@" )
parser.add_argument('file', help='csv file to import', action='store')
args = parser.parse_args()
csv_file = args.file

# open csv file
with open(csv_file, 'rb') as csvfile:

    # get number of columns
    for line in csvfile.readlines():
        array = line.split(',')
        first_item = array[0]

    num_columns = len(array)
    csvfile.seek(0)

    reader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=" ")
        included_cols = [1, 2, 6, 7]

    for row in reader:
            content = list(row[i] for i in included_cols)
            print content

and I’m expecting that this will print out only the specific columns I want for each row except it doesn’t, I get the last column only.

13 Answers
13

Leave a Comment