This tutorial demonstrates Python way of reading CSV files into either dictionary or list data structures.

Abstract

In this tutorial we will read a CSV file to get the data in the form of List and Dictionary data structures.

Implementation

We will now see how to read following CSV file into List and List of Dictionary -

Id,Title,Value
1,Python,24
2,Java,43
3,PHP,23
4,.net,29

I have got this file saved on path D:\Python_reading.csv in my machine.

Reading CSV file into List

import csv

#Reading CSV file as a List
with open('D:\Python_reading.csv', 'rb') as csvfile:
    csvreader = csv.reader(csvfile)
    next(csvreader) #to remove csv header
    for row in csvreader:
        print row

Output:

['1', 'Python', '24']
['2', 'Java', '43']
['3', 'PHP', '23']
['4', '.net', '29']

Reading CSV file into Dictionary

import csv

#Reading CSV file as a Dictionary     
with open('D:\Python_reading.csv', 'rb') as csvfile:
    dictreader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)
    for r in dictreader:
        print r

Output:

{'Id': '1', 'Value': '24', 'Title': 'Python'}
{'Id': '2', 'Value': '43', 'Title': 'Java'}
{'Id': '3', 'Value': '23', 'Title': 'PHP'}
{'Id': '4', 'Value': '29', 'Title': '.net'}

Reading CSV file into List of Dictionary

import csv

#Reading CSV file as a list of dictionary   
with open('D:\Python_reading.csv', 'rb') as csvfile:
    listdictreader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)
    data = [val for val in listdictreader]
    print data

Output:

[{'Id': '1', 'Value': '24', 'Title': 'Python'}, {'Id': '2', 'Value': '43', 'Title': 'Java'}, {'Id': '3', 'Value': '23', 'Title': 'PHP'}, {'Id': '4', 'Value': '29', 'Title': '.net'}]

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