Add lines from files to corresponding dictionaries

Question

I have to iterate through multiple text files. For each file I read its contents and append each line to its corresponding dictionary to then build a JSON file.

Each text file has the following structure:

• Line 1: The title key.
• Line 2: The name key.
• Line 3: The date key.
• Line 4: The feedback key.

Here is an example of two of these files:

001.txt

Great Customer Service
John
2017-12-21
The customer service here is very good. They helped me find a 2017 Camry with good condition in reasonable price. Compared to other dealers they provided the lowest price. Definitely recommend!

002.txt

You will find what you want here
Tom
2019-06-05
I've being look around for a second handed Lexus RX for my family and this store happened to have a few of those. The experience was similar to most car dealers. The one I ended up buying has good condition and low mileage. I am pretty satisfied with the price they offered.

My approach is successful but I wonder if there is a better and faster approach of joining each line to its corresponding dictionary.
Additionally do I need to write with open('file', 'r') for each file? Even when I use os.listdir() I still have the same issue.

import json

l1 = []
l2 = []

with open("C:/Users/user/Desktop/001.txt") as file1, open("C:/Users/user/Desktop/002.txt") as file2:
    for line1, line2 in zip(file1, file2):
      if not line1.isspace() and not line2.isspace():
        l1.append(line1.rstrip())
        l2.append(line2.rstrip())

Dict = {}

Dict['dictio1'] = {'title': "", "name": "", "date": "", "feedback": ""}

Dict['dictio2'] = {'title': "", "name": "", "date": "", "feedback": ""}

Dict['dictio1']["title"] = l1[0]
Dict['dictio1']["name"] = l1[1]
Dict['dictio1']["date"] = l1[2]
Dict['dictio1']["feedback"] = l1[3]

Dict['dictio2']["title"] = l2[0]
Dict['dictio2']["name"] = l2[1]
Dict['dictio2']["date"] = l2[2]
Dict['dictio2']["feedback"] = l2[3]   


with open('file.json', 'w') as file_json:
    json.dump(Dict, file_json, indent=2)

{
  "dictio1": {
    "title": "Great Customer Service",
    "name": "John",
    "date": "2017-12-21",
    "feedback": "The customer service here is very good. They helped me find a 2017 Camry with good condition in reasonable price. Campared to other dealers they provided the lowest price. Definttely recommend!"
  },
  "dictio2": {
    "title": "You will find what you want here",
    "name": "Tom",
    "date": "2019-06-05",
    "feedback": "I've being look around for a second handed Lexus RX for my family and this store happened to have a few of those. The experience was similar to most car dealers. The one I ended up buying has good condition and low mileage. I am pretty satisfied with the price they offered."
  }
}

Answer 1

There are some ways you can improve your code:

1. Rather than building a dictionary and then manually assigning each value you can assign to l1[0] etc straight away.

   Dict['dictio1'] = {'title': "", "name": "", "date": "", "feedback": ""}
   Dict['dictio1']["title"] = l1[0]
   Dict['dictio1']["name"] = l1[1]
   Dict['dictio1']["date"] = l1[2]
   Dict['dictio1']["feedback"] = l1[3]
   

   Dict["dictio1"] = {
       "title": l1[0],
       "name": l1[1],
       "date": l1[2],
       "feedback": l1[3],
   }
   

2. You should use a for loop over the paths and have the with inside it. Only building one dictionary at a time.

   for key, path in ...:
       with open(path) as f:
           lines = []
           for line in f:
               if not line.isspace():
                   lines.append(line.rstrip())
           Dict[key] = {
               "title": l1[0],
               "name": l1[1],
               "date": l1[2],
               "feedback": l1[3],
           }
   

3. We can use a list comprehension to build lines with some sugar.

   lines = [line.rstrip() for line in f if not line.isspace()]
   

Putting this all together we can get:

data = {}
paths = [
    ("dictio1", "C:/Users/user/Desktop/001.txt"),
    ("dictio2", "C:/Users/user/Desktop/002.txt"),
]
for key, path in paths:
    with open(path) as f:
        lines = [line.rstrip() for line in f if not line.isspace()]
        data[key] = {
            "title": lines[0],
            "name": lines[1],
            "date": lines[2],
            "feedback": lines[3],
        }

with open('file.json', 'w') as file_json:
    json.dump(data, file_json, indent=2)

I would recomend you change your JSON structure to remove the outer dictionary and instead use a list. This would make all your code simpler not only building it here but consuming it later.

This would look like:

data = []
paths = [
    "C:/Users/user/Desktop/001.txt",
    "C:/Users/user/Desktop/002.txt",
]
for path in paths:
    with open(path) as f:
        lines = [line.rstrip() for line in f if not line.isspace()]
        data.append({
            "title": lines[0],
            "name": lines[1],
            "date": lines[2],
            "feedback": lines[3],
        })

with open('file.json', 'w') as file_json:
    json.dump(data, file_json, indent=2)