A simple log that tracks hours worked and and a python script that calculates wages

Question

I wrote a simple Python script that will calculate income for a given month and hourly wage by parsing the contents of a log file. The instructions for how to use it is in my GitHub account here. The script is used in the command line with the following command

python calculate_hours.py MY_LOG.txt MONTH YEAR HOURLY_WAGE

• MY_LOG.txt is the text file containing the date and the number of hours worked on that day
• MONTH and YEAR are the full (not abbreviated) month and year for which you'd like the income calculated (e.g. December 2015)
• HOURLY_WAGE is, well, your hourly wage (e.g. 25)

The log file must be formatted in a specific way. An entry in the log should look like the following

**Date**: 21 December 2015
**Time**: 5pm - 7pm, 12-1am
**Hours**: 2, 1

**Notes**:
+ Debugged script written yesterday
+ Checked data 

The script depends on the information after **Date** and **Hours** to calculate income.

It's very simple and I was wondering if there was a way to improve it. The script looks for patterns in the log file to get the date and the hours worked.

import re
import argparse

def wage_calculator(log_txt_file, month, year, wage):

    date_pattern = "\*\*Date\*\*"  # pattern identifying the date in the file
    hours_full = []

    with log_txt_file as f:

        for line in log_txt_file:

            if re.search(r"{0}".format(date_pattern), line):  # go to the relevant line

                if re.search(month, line) and re.search(str(year), line):  # within line, go to desired month/year

                    # skips two lines to the line containing the number of hours worked
                    f.next()
                    hours_line = f.next()

                    hours_list_str = re.findall(r'[-+]?\d*\.*\d+', hours_line)  # put hours in a list
                    hours_list = [float(x) for x in hours_list_str]

                    hours_full += hours_list

                    sum_hours_date = sum(hours_list)

                    print line.rstrip()
                    print "Hours logged: " + str(hours_list)
                    print "Total hours for the day " + str(sum_hours_date) + "\n"

    hours_total = sum(hours_full)

    print "Total hours worked in {0} {1} is {2}".format(month, year,
                                                        hours_total)
    print "At ${0}/hr, your total wage for {1} {2} is ${3}".format(wage, month
                                                                   , year, hours_total * wage)


def main():

    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()

    parser.add_argument("file",
                        help="Text file containing hours logged (e.g. ra_hours.txt)",
                        type=argparse.FileType('r')
                        )
    parser.add_argument("month",
                        help="The month for which we want the income",
                        type=str)
    parser.add_argument("year",
                        help="Enter year",
                        type=int)
    parser.add_argument("wage",
                        help="Enter hourly wage",
                        type=float)

    args = parser.parse_args()

    wage_calculator(args.file, args.month, args.year, args.wage)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Answer 1

I think regex is a bit much for this scale of project. I decided to try rewriting your function without using regex, and I think the result is much cleaner and more Pythonic.

In addition, I replaced your hours_full list of lists with a single number that tracks the total. This greatly simplifies the code.

However, the general structure is essentially the same.

def wage_calculator(log_txt_file, month, year, wage):
    date_pattern = "**Date**: "  # pattern identifying the date in the file
    hours_pattern = "**Hours**: " # pattern identifying the hours in the file
    hours_total = 0.0

    with log_txt_file as f:
        for line in log_txt_file:
            if line.startswith(date_pattern):
                if month in line and str(year) in line:
                    f.next() # skip a line
                    # skip the start of the line to just get a list of hours
                    hours_line = f.next()[len(hours_pattern):]
                    hours = sum(map(float, hours_line.split(', ')))

                    hours_total += hours

                    print line.rstrip()
                    print "Hours logged: " + hours_line
                    print "Total hours for the day " + str(hours) + "\n"

    print "Total hours worked in {0} {1} is {2}".format(month, year,
                                                        hours_total)
    print "At ${0}/hr, your total wage for {1} {2} is ${3}".format(wage, month
                                                                   , year, hours_total * wage)

Beyond this, I would look into more error handling and data cleanup. For example, verify that the **Hours** line matches the **Time** line.

Also a .txt doesn't seem suitable for this data, maybe use a .csv?