Writing values to excel csv in python

Question

I have the below code where I'm trying to write values to an excel file, but my output adds one letter in every single column, instead of the whole word, like so

I want the whole word to be in one column. I'm currently passing in an array that has the words [u'Date / Time', u'City', u'State', u'Shape', u'Duration', u'Summary'] into my writer. How can I make it so that I get the whole word in one column?

import requests
import csv
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

r = requests.get('http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxlAK.html')
soup = BeautifulSoup(r.text, 'html.parser')
csv.register_dialect('excel')

f = open('ufo.csv', 'wb')
writer = csv.writer(f)

headers = soup.find_all('th')
header_text = []
header_count = 1
for header in headers:
    if header_count == len(headers):
        print "value being written: " + str(header_text)
        writer.writerows(header_text)
    else:
        header_text.append(header.text)
        header_count += 1

f.close()

writer.writerows([header_text]) ?

Gerrat
– Gerrat

2016-09-09 20:41:44 +00:00
Commented Sep 9, 2016 at 20:41 — Gerrat
– Gerrat, Commented Sep 9, 2016 at 20:41
That works, why do the [] make a difference?

Rafa
– Rafa

2016-09-09 20:43:41 +00:00
Commented Sep 9, 2016 at 20:43 — Rafa
– Rafa, Commented Sep 9, 2016 at 20:43

Gerrat · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-09 20:48:27Z

2

You're extracting the text of a single column via:

for header in headers

For each single column, you're writing it out like a row of columns via:

writer.writerows(header_text)

The writerows method expects a list of columns to write, so it iterates over it. You've passed it a single string, so it iterates over that and writes one character per column.

So either:

writer.writerows([header_text])  # turn this single column into a list
# or
writer.writerow(header_text)  # just write out as a single item

should work.

answered Sep 9, 2016 at 20:48

Gerrat

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