Automate the Boring Stuff Chapter 13 - Spreadsheet to Text Files

Question

The project outline:

Write a program that performs the tasks of the previous program in reverse order: the program should open a spreadsheet and write the cells of column A into one text file, the cells of column B into another text file, and so on.

My solution:

# A program to read a spreadsheet and write it to a text file with one text file per column
# Usage: python spreadsheet_to_text.py "spreadsheet path" "folder to save .txt files"

import sys, openpyxl
from pathlib import Path
from openpyxl.utils import get_column_letter

def main(spreadsheet_path, save_folder):
    workbook = openpyxl.load_workbook(spreadsheet_path)
    sheet = workbook.active
    for column_index in range(1, sheet.max_column + 1):
        file_path = save_folder / f"Text for column {get_column_letter(column_index)}.txt"
        with open(file_path, "w", encoding="utf-8") as text_file:
            for row_index in range(1, sheet.max_row + 1):
                cell = sheet.cell(row=row_index, column=column_index)
                if not cell.value:
                    text_file.write("\n")
                else:
                    text_file.write(str(cell.value) + "\n")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    spreadsheet_path = Path(sys.argv[1]) # The location of the spreadsheet to open
    save_folder = Path(sys.argv[2]) # The path of the folder to save the .txt files in
    main(spreadsheet_path, save_folder)

I decided to copy the formulas themselves rather than the result because the outline doesn't specify and the chapter doesn't discuss it.

Answer 1

Use PEP8 to format your code. Two blank lines between functions, and two between imports and the first function (main).

In the main function, save_folder seems to be a Path object, but that's not obvious from reading the code until you use the / notation. Maybe use the type hints in the function definition.

def main(spreadsheet_path: Path, save_folder: Path):
    # Your code here

Your main function is crowded--add in blank lines (e.g. before the outermost for loop) to make it easier to read.

It's possible for things like the file open to fail, if, for example, the program does not have the necessary permissions--consider using a try-except block to handle such cases.

It's possible your main function could be simplified using pandas, unless you were not allowed.

The main code should check that you have 2 arguments passed to begin with, that the paths exist, and other such conditions.