TSV to HTML

[Brian]

I was wondering if anyone here on the group could point me in a
direction that would expllaing how to use python to convert a tsv file
to html. I have been searching for a resource but have only seen
information on dealing with converting csv to tsv. Specifically I want
to take the values and insert them into an html table.

I have been trying to figure it out myself, and in essence, this is
what I have come up with. Am I on the right track? I really have the
feeling that I am re-inventing the wheel here.

1) in the code define a css
2) use a regex to extract the info between tabs
3) wrap the values in the appropriate tags and insert into table.
4) write the .html file

Thanks again for your patience,
Brian

[Tim Chase]

Re: TSV to HTML

> I was wondering if anyone here on the group could point me[color=blue]
> in a direction that would expllaing how to use python to
> convert a tsv file to html. I have been searching for a
> resource but have only seen information on dealing with
> converting csv to tsv. Specifically I want to take the
> values and insert them into an html table.
>
> I have been trying to figure it out myself, and in
> essence, this is what I have come up with. Am I on the
> right track? I really have the feeling that I am
> re-inventing the wheel here.
>
> 1) in the code define a css
> 2) use a regex to extract the info between tabs
> 3) wrap the values in the appropriate tags and insert into
> table.
> 4) write the .html file[/color]

Sounds like you just want to do something like

print "<table>"
for line in file("in.tsv"):
print "<tr>"
items = line.split("\t" )
for item in items:
print "<td>%s</td>" % item
print "</tr>"
print "</table>"

It gets a little more complex if you need to clean each item
for HTML entities/scripts/etc...but that's usually just a
function that you'd wrap around the item:

print "<td>%s</td>" % escapeEntity(it em)

using whatever "escapeEnti ty" function you have on hand.
E.g.

from xml.sax.saxutil s import escape
:
:
print "<td>%s</td>" % escape(item)

It doesn't gracefully attempt to define headers using
<thead>, <tbody>, and <th> sorts of rows, but a little
toying should solve that.

-tim

[Dan M]

Re: TSV to HTML

> 1) in the code define a css[color=blue]
> 2) use a regex to extract the info between tabs[/color]

In place of this, you might want to look at

http://effbot.org/librarybook/csv.htm

Around the middle of that page you'll see how to use a delimiter other
than a comma
[color=blue]
> 3) wrap the values in the appropriate tags and insert into table. 4)
> write the .html file
>
> Thanks again for your patience,
> Brian[/color]

[Leif K-Brooks]

Re: TSV to HTML

Brian wrote:[color=blue]
> I was wondering if anyone here on the group could point me in a
> direction that would expllaing how to use python to convert a tsv file
> to html. I have been searching for a resource but have only seen
> information on dealing with converting csv to tsv. Specifically I want
> to take the values and insert them into an html table.[/color]

import csv
from xml.sax.saxutil s import escape

def tsv_to_html(inp ut_file, output_file):
output_file.wri te('<table><tbo dy>\n')
for row in csv.reader(inpu t_file, 'excel-tab'):
output_file.wri te('<tr>')
for col in row:
output_file.wri te('<td>%s</td>' % escape(col))
output_file.wri te('</tr>\n')
output_file.wri te('</tbody></table>')

Usage example:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> from cStringIO import StringIO
>>> input_file = StringIO('"foo" \t"bar"\t"baz"\ n'[/color][/color][/color]
.... '"qux"\t"quux"\ t"quux"\n')[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> output_file = StringIO()
>>> tsv_to_html(inp ut_file, output_file)
>>> print output_file.get value()[/color][/color][/color]
<table><tbody >
<tr><td>foo</td><td>bar</td><td>baz</td></tr>
<tr><td>qux</td><td>quux</td><td>quux</td></tr>
</tbody></table>

[Brian]

Re: TSV to HTML


First let me say that I appreciate the responses that everyone has
given.

A friend of mine is a ruby programmer but knows nothing about python.
He gave me the script below and it does exactly what I want, only it is
in Ruby. Not knowing ruby this is greek to me, and I would like to
re-write it in python.

I ask then, is this essentially what others here have shown me to do,
or is it in a different vein all together?

Code:

class TsvToHTML
@@styleBlock = <<-ENDMARK
<style type='text/css'>
td {
border-left:1px solid #000000;
padding-right:4px;
padding-left:4px;
white-space: nowrap;
}
.cellTitle {
border-bottom:1px solid #000000;
background:#fff fe0;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center;
}
.cell0 { background:#eff 1f1; }
.cell1 { background:#f8f 8f8; }
</style>
ENDMARK

def TsvToHTML::wrap Tag(data,tag,mo difier = "")
return "<#{tag} #{modifier}>" + data + "</#{tag}>\n"
end # wrapTag

def TsvToHTML::make Page(source)
page = ""
rowNum = 0
source.readline s.each { |record|
row = ""
record.chomp.sp lit("\t").each { |field|
# replace blank fields with &nbsp;
field.sub!(/^$/,"&nbsp;")
# wrap in TD tag, specify style
row += wrapTag(field," td","class=\" " +
((rowNum == 0)?"cellTitle": "cell#{rowN um % 2}") +
"\"")
}
rowNum += 1
# wrap in TR tag, add row to page
page += wrapTag(row,"tr ") + "\n"
}
# finish page formatting
[ [ "table","cellpa dding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0" ], "body","htm l"
].each { |tag|
page = wrapTag(@@style Block,"head") + page if tag == "html"
page = wrapTag(page,*t ag)
}
return page
end # makePage
end # class

# stdin -> convert -> stdout
print TsvToHTML.makeP age(STDIN)

[Paddy]

Re: TSV to HTML

Brian wrote:[color=blue]
> First let me say that I appreciate the responses that everyone has
> given.
>
> A friend of mine is a ruby programmer but knows nothing about python.
> He gave me the script below and it does exactly what I want, only it is
> in Ruby. Not knowing ruby this is greek to me, and I would like to
> re-write it in python.
>
> I ask then, is this essentially what others here have shown me to do,
> or is it in a different vein all together?
>[/color]
Leif's Python example uses the csv module which understands a lot more
about the peculiarities of the CSV/TSV formats.
The Ruby example prepends a <style>...</style> block.

The Ruby example splits each line to form a table row and each row on
tabs, to form the cells.

The thing about TSV/CSV formats is that their is no one format. you
need to check how your TSV creator generates the TSV file:
Does it put quotes around text fields?
What kind of quotes?
How does it represent null fields?
Might you get fields that include newlines?

- P.S. I'm not a Ruby programmer, just read the source ;-)

[Brian]

Re: TSV to HTML


Dennis,

Thank you for that response. Your code was very helpful to me. I
think that actually seeing how it should be done in Python was a lot
more educational than spending hours with trial and error.

One question (and this is a topic that I still have trouble getting my
arms around). Why is the text in STYLEBLOCK tripple quoted?

Thanks again,
Brian

[Scott David Daniels]

Re: TSV to HTML

Brian wrote:[color=blue]
> One question (and this is a topic that I still have trouble getting my
> arms around). Why is the text in STYLEBLOCK tripple quoted?[/color]

Because triple-quoted strings can span lines and include single quotes
and double quotes.

--
--Scott David Daniels
scott.daniels@a cm.org

[Brian]

Re: TSV to HTML


Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:[color=blue]
> On 1 Jun 2006 03:29:35 -0700, "Brian" <bnblazer@gmail .com> declaimed the
> following in comp.lang.pytho n:
>[color=green]
> > Thank you for that response. Your code was very helpful to me. I
> > think that actually seeing how it should be done in Python was a lot
> > more educational than spending hours with trial and error.
> >[/color]
> It's not the best code around -- I hacked it together pretty much
> line-for-line from an assumption of what the Ruby was doing (I don't do
> Ruby -- too much PERL idiom in it)
>[color=green]
> > One question (and this is a topic that I still have trouble getting my
> > arms around). Why is the text in STYLEBLOCK tripple quoted?
> >[/color]
> Triple quotes allow: 1) use of single quotes within the block
> without needing to escape them; 2) allows the string to span multiple
> lines. Plain string quoting must be one logical line to the parser.
>
> I've practically never seen anyone use a line continuation character
> in Python. And triple quoting looks cleaner than parser concatenation.
>
> The alternatives would have been:
>
> Line Continuation:
> STYLEBLOCK = '\n\
> <style type="text/css">\n\
> td {\n\
> border-left:1px solid #000000;\n\
> padding-right:4px;\n\
> padding-left:4px;\n\
> white-space: nowrap; }\n\
> .cellTitle {\n\
> border-bottom:1px solid #000000;\n\
> background:#fff fe0;\n\
> font-weight: bold;\n\
> text-align: center; }\n\
> .cell0 { background:#3ff 1f1; }\n\
> .cell1 { background:#f8f 8f8; }\n\
> </style>\n\
> '
> Note the \n\ as the end of each line; the \n is to keep the
> formatting on the generated HTML (otherwise everything would be one long
> line) and the final \ (which must be the physical end of line)
> signifying "this line is continued". Also note that I used ' rather than
> " to avoid escaping the " on text/css.
>
> Parser Concatenation:
> STYLEBLOCK = (
> '<style type="text/css">\n'
> "td {\n"
> " border-left:1px solid #000000;\n"
> " padding-right:4px;\n"
> " padding-left:4px;\n"
> " white-space: nowrap; }\n"
> ".cellTitle {\n"
> " border-bottom:1px solid #000000;\n"
> " background:#fff fe0;\n"
> " font-weight: bold;\n"
> " text-align: center; }\n"
> ".cell0 { background:#3ff 1f1; }\n"
> ".cell1 { background:#f8f 8f8; }\n"
> "</style>\n"
> )
>
> Note the use of ( ) where the original had """ """. Also note that
> each line has quotes at start/end (the first has ' to avoid escaping
> text/css). There are no commas separating each line (and the \n is still
> for formatting). Using the ( ) creates an expression, and Python is nice
> enough to let one split expressions inside () or[lists], {dicts}, over
> multiple lines (I used that feature in a few spots to put call arguments
> on multiple lines). Two strings that are next to each other
>
> "string1" "string2"
>
> are parsed as one string
>
> "string1string2 "
>
> Using """ (or ''') is the cleanest of those choices, especially if
> you want to do preformatted layout of the text. It works similar to the
> Ruby/PERL construct that basically said: Copy all text up to the next
> occurrence of MARKER_STRING.[/color]

Thank you for your explanation, now it makes sense.

Brian