Additionally, you’ll need to generate code in your application to use those relationships.Ī final complication is that people you want to share your data file with will also need to know about and act on the structures and relationships you’ve created in the data. If your application will change the data in the file, then one solution would be to read the entire file into memory, make the changes, and write the data out to another file.Īnother problem with using flat files is that you’ll need to explicitly create and maintain any relationships between parts of your data and the application program within the file syntax. Large files are still human-readable, but editing them to create data or look for problems becomes a more difficult task. The advantages of working with flat files start to diminish as the data becomes larger. Python has the built-in csv module and the powerful pandas module available, making working with CSV files a potent solution. Flat files also have the advantage of being self-contained and transferable if you want to share the data.Īlmost every programming language has tools and libraries that make working with CSV files easier. For example, Excel can import or export a CSV file to and from a spreadsheet. Many applications can export flat-file versions of the data generated by the file. Having the data in a human-readable format is helpful not only for creating the data file with a text editor but also for examining the data and looking for any inconsistencies or problems. Working with data in flat files is manageable and straightforward to implement. Usually, this means the data file needs to have some structure that the application can use to read and parse the text in the file.īelow is a CSV file named author_book_publisher.csv, used by the first example program in this tutorial: Being able to save data in a file allows you to share information from the program between users and sites where the application runs.īefore a program can read a data file, it has to be able to understand the data. Being able to read data files with Python allows you to restore an application to a useful state when you rerun it at a later time. Python excels at reading from and saving to files. The comma character delimiter indicates the boundary between data values. Each line of text represents a row of data, and each comma-separated value is a field within that row. Because they don’t have to use fixed field widths, flat files often use other structures to make it possible for a program to parse text.įor example, comma-separated value (CSV) files are lines of plain text in which the comma character separates the data elements. Flat files contain human-readable characters and are very useful for creating and reading data. Using Flat Files for Data StorageĪ flat file is a file containing data with no internal hierarchy and usually no references to external files. You can get all of the code and data you’ll see in this tutorial by clicking on the link below:ĭownload the sample code: Click here to get the code you’ll use to learn about data management with SQLite and SQLAlchemy in this tutorial. SQLAlchemy to work with data as Python objects.SQL to improve access to persistent data. ROOT DB SQLITE BROWSER HOW TOIn this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use: Below, you’ll explore using SQL databases and flat files for data storage and manipulation and learn how to decide which approach is right for your program. Flat files are often human-readable text files-though they can also be binary data-with a structure that can be parsed by a computer program. You can achieve similar results using flat files in any number of formats, including CSV, JSON, XML, and even custom formats. Python, SQLite, and SQLAlchemy give your programs database functionality, allowing you to store data in a single file without the need for a database server. Watch it together with the written tutorial to deepen your understanding: SQLite and SQLAlchemy in Python: Moving Your Data Beyond Flat FilesĪll programs process data in one form or another, and many need to be able to save and retrieve that data from one invocation to the next. Watch Now This tutorial has a related video course created by the Real Python team.
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