How to write header row with csv.DictWriter?

Question

Assume I have a csv.DictReader object and I want to write it out as a CSV file. How can I do this?

I know that I can write the rows of data like this:

dr = csv.DictReader(open(f), delimiter='t')
# process my dr object
# ...
# write out object
output = csv.DictWriter(open(f2, 'w'), delimiter='t')
for item in dr:
    output.writerow(item)

But how can I include the fieldnames?

Asked By: user248237

||

Source

Answer 1

Edit:
In 2.7 / 3.2 there is a new writeheader() method. Also, John Machin’s answer provides a simpler method of writing the header row.
Simple example of using the writeheader() method now available in 2.7 / 3.2:

from collections import OrderedDict
ordered_fieldnames = OrderedDict([('field1',None),('field2',None)])
with open(outfile,'wb') as fou:
    dw = csv.DictWriter(fou, delimiter='t', fieldnames=ordered_fieldnames)
    dw.writeheader()
    # continue on to write data

Instantiating DictWriter requires a fieldnames argument.
From the documentation:

The fieldnames parameter identifies
the order in which values in the
dictionary passed to the writerow()
method are written to the csvfile.

Put another way: The Fieldnames argument is required because Python dicts are inherently unordered.
Below is an example of how you’d write the header and data to a file.
Note: with statement was added in 2.6. If using 2.5: from __future__ import with_statement

with open(infile,'rb') as fin:
    dr = csv.DictReader(fin, delimiter='t')

# dr.fieldnames contains values from first row of `f`.
with open(outfile,'wb') as fou:
    dw = csv.DictWriter(fou, delimiter='t', fieldnames=dr.fieldnames)
    headers = {} 
    for n in dw.fieldnames:
        headers[n] = n
    dw.writerow(headers)
    for row in dr:
        dw.writerow(row)

As @FM mentions in a comment, you can condense header-writing to a one-liner, e.g.:

with open(outfile,'wb') as fou:
    dw = csv.DictWriter(fou, delimiter='t', fieldnames=dr.fieldnames)
    dw.writerow(dict((fn,fn) for fn in dr.fieldnames))
    for row in dr:
        dw.writerow(row)

Answered By: mechanical_meat

Answer 2

A few options:

(1) Laboriously make an identity-mapping (i.e. do-nothing) dict out of your fieldnames so that csv.DictWriter can convert it back to a list and pass it to a csv.writer instance.

(2) The documentation mentions “the underlying writer instance” … so just use it (example at the end).

dw.writer.writerow(dw.fieldnames)

(3) Avoid the csv.Dictwriter overhead and do it yourself with csv.writer

Writing data:

w.writerow([d[k] for k in fieldnames])

or

w.writerow([d.get(k, restval) for k in fieldnames])

Instead of the extrasaction “functionality”, I’d prefer to code it myself; that way you can report ALL “extras” with the keys and values, not just the first extra key. What is a real nuisance with DictWriter is that if you’ve verified the keys yourself as each dict was being built, you need to remember to use extrasaction=’ignore’ otherwise it’s going to SLOWLY (fieldnames is a list) repeat the check:

wrong_fields = [k for k in rowdict if k not in self.fieldnames]

============

>>> f = open('csvtest.csv', 'wb')
>>> import csv
>>> fns = 'foo bar zot'.split()
>>> dw = csv.DictWriter(f, fns, restval='Huh?')
# dw.writefieldnames(fns) -- no such animal
>>> dw.writerow(fns) # no such luck, it can't imagine what to do with a list
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:python26libcsv.py", line 144, in writerow
    return self.writer.writerow(self._dict_to_list(rowdict))
  File "C:python26libcsv.py", line 141, in _dict_to_list
    return [rowdict.get(key, self.restval) for key in self.fieldnames]
AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'get'
>>> dir(dw)
['__doc__', '__init__', '__module__', '_dict_to_list', 'extrasaction', 'fieldnam
es', 'restval', 'writer', 'writerow', 'writerows']
# eureka
>>> dw.writer.writerow(dw.fieldnames)
>>> dw.writerow({'foo':'oof'})
>>> f.close()
>>> open('csvtest.csv', 'rb').read()
'foo,bar,zotrnoof,Huh?,Huh?rn'
>>>

Answered By: John Machin

Answer 3

Another way to do this would be to add before adding lines in your output, the following line :

output.writerow(dict(zip(dr.fieldnames, dr.fieldnames)))

The zip would return a list of doublet containing the same value. This list could be used to initiate a dictionary.

Answered By: Raphael Pr

Answer 4

writer.writeheader()

Above works like charm. Just don’t forget to add your fieldnames attribute when intializing your csv.DictWriter

Answered By: Erika

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