Python: Working with Files

Course details

When you’re working with files of any kind, nothing saves time like automation. No one wants to spend a day manually editing or renaming 1000 files. In this course, Kathryn Hodge shows you how to use Python to automate operating system tasks, aggregate data across multiple sources, save results to files, and level up your Python applications. Kathryn starts by introducing the idea of the file system with absolute versus relative paths, directory structures, and more. From there, she explores how to use tools from the Python Standard Library to retrieve metadata about the files and paths located on your machine. Once you know how to navigate to the appropriate files you want to work with, she shows how to process files with Python, parsing data not only in text formats, but also JSON and CSV. Finally, Kathryn looks at writing data to different file types and explains how to store that data within an archive well as with temporary files.

Concepts

Introduction

Automate file tasks with Python
Accessing Directory and File Details

Understand the file system

Navigate the file system with os module
Use os module to uncover path and file details
Filter path names with glob module
Recursively list all files in a directory
Understand Python's new pathlib module
Create directories in Python
Challenge - Count files
Solution - Count files

Processing Files

Open files in Python
Read text files in Python
Parse JSON files with Python
Read CSV files in Python with csv module and pandas
Extract text from PDF files using Python
Challenge - Aggregate data from multiple sources

Solution - Aggregate data from multiple sources

Writing to Files
Write data to a file in Python
Move and rename files with Python
Copy with Python
Delete files with Python
Save tabular data with csv module
Write data to a JSON file in Python
Challenge - Reorganize digital photo collection

Solution - Reorganize digital photo collection

Working with Archives and Temporary Files
Create ZIP archives with Python
Read from and extract ZIP archives
Open and read TAR archives
Extract from and write to TAR archives
Work with temporary files in Python

Conclusion

Continue to analyze data with Python