0:00 What are CSV files?
0:56 Tabular data saved from Excel spreadsheets to CSV files
1:35 CSV format is a plain-text format separated by comma delimiters
2:00 Rows and columns in CSV file formats
3:08 It is easy to write programs that can read CSV files
3:40 Import DictReader from csv in Python to read CSV rows into dictionaries
4:33 DictReader uses first row for keys of the dictionary returned for each row of values
5:23 Using the open function to establish a file handle to read a UTF-8 CSV file
5:57 For in loop over rows of a CSV file with a DictReader and print each row
8:35 Reading numerical data in a CSV file with DictReader and type casting
13:06 Find the average of a column in a CSV file in Python
14:45 Why write programs that process CSV files?
In this introductory tutorial you will learn about the CSV file format and how to write programs that make use of Python's built-in CSV library using the DictReader class. With these simple concepts, you will be able to write programs that process structured, tabular data that can be created or sourced from spreadsheet software or database software. Packages like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets can save and produce CSV files from their Save As or Export File options. Popular database software can produce CSV files, too. When using a DictReader, all column values will be strings, and this video shows you how to intentionally convert column data to numerical data for further analysis. 3rd party libraries such as pandas will do these kinds of conversions automatically for you. Once you are comfortable with the idea of reading CSV files using this lower-level functionality, you are encouraged to make use of higher-level libraries such as pandas for day-to-day data processing and analysis.
