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How can I align columns if rows have different number of values?

I am scraping data with python. I get a csv file and can split it into columns in excel later. But I am encountering an issue I have not been able to solve. Sometimes the scraped items have two statuses and sometimes just one. The second status is thus moving the other values in the columns to the right and as a result the dates are not all in the same column which would be useful to sort the rows.
Do you have any idea how to make the columns merge if there are two statuses for example or other solutions?
Maybe is is also an issue that I still need to separate the values into columns manually with excel.
Here is my code
#call packages
import random
import time
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
import pandas as pd
# define driver etc.
service_obj = Service("C:\\Users\\joerg\\PycharmProjects\\dynamic2\\chromedriver.exe")
browser = webdriver.Chrome(service=service_obj)
# create loop
initiative_list = []
for i in range(0, 2):
url = 'https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives_de?page='+str(i)
browser.get(url)
time.sleep(random.randint(5, 10))
initiative_item = browser.find_elements(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "initivative-item")
initiatives = [item.text for item in initiative_item]
initiative_list.extend(initiatives)
df = pd.DataFrame(initiative_list)
#create csv
print(df)
df.to_csv('Initiativen.csv')
df.columns = ['tosplit']
new_df = df['tosplit'].str.split('\n', expand=True)
print(new_df)
new_df.to_csv('Initiativennew.csv')
I tried to merge the columns if there are two statuses.

make the columns merge if there are two statuses for example or other solutions
[If by "statuses" you mean the yellow labels ending in OPEN/UPCOMING/etc, then] it should be taken care of by the following parts of the getDetails_iiaRow (below the dividing line):
labels = cssSelect(iiaEl, 'div.field span.label')
and then
'labels': ', '.join([l.text.strip() for l in labels])
So, multiple labels will be separated by commas (or any other separator you apply .join to).
initiative_item = browser.find_elements(By.CSS_SELECTOR, "initivative-item")
initiatives = [item.text for item in initiative_item]
Instead of doing it like this and then having to split and clean things, you should consider extracting each item in a more specific manner and have each "row" be represented as a dictionary (with the column-names as the keys, so nothing gets mis-aligned later). If you wrap it as a function:
def cssSelect(el, sel): return el.find_elements(By.CSS_SELECTOR, sel)
def getDetails_iiaRow(iiaEl):
title = cssSelect(iiaEl, 'div.search-result-title')
labels = cssSelect(iiaEl, 'div.field span.label')
iiarDets = {
'title': title[0].text.strip() if title else None,
'labels': ', '.join([l.text.strip() for l in labels])
}
cvSel = 'div[translate]+div:last-child'
for c in cssSelect(iiaEl, f'div:has(>{cvSel})'):
colName = cssSelect(c, 'div[translate]')[0].text.strip()
iiarDets[colName] = cssSelect(c, cvSel)[0].text.strip()
link = iiaEl.get_attribute('href')
if link[:1] == '/':
link = f'https://ec.europa.eu/{link}'
iiarDets['link'] = iiaEl.get_attribute('href')
return iiarDets
then you can simply loop through the pages like:
initiative_list = []
for i in range(0, 2):
url = f'https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives_de?page={i}'
browser.get(url)
time.sleep(random.randint(5, 10))
initiative_list += [
getDetails_iiaRow(iia) for iia in
cssSelect(browser, 'initivative-item>article>a ')
]
and the since it's all cleaned already, you can directly save the data with
pd.DataFrame(initiative_list).to_csv('Initiativen.csv', index=False)
The output I got for the first 3 pages looks like:

I think it is worth working a little bit harder to get your data rationalised before putting it in the csv rather than trying to unpick the damage once ragged data has been exported.
A quick look at each record in the page suggests that there are five main items that you want to export and these correspond to the five top-level divs in the a element.
The complexity (as you note) comes because there are sometimes two statuses specified, and in that case there is sometimes a separate date range for each and sometimes a single date range.
I have therefore chosen to put the three ever present fields as the first three columns, followed next by the status + date range columns as pairs. Finally I have removed the field names (these should effectively become the column headings) to leave only the variable data in the rows.
initiatives = [processDiv(item) for item in initiative_item]
def processDiv(item):
divs = item.find_elements(By.XPATH, "./article/a/div")
if "\n" in divs[0].text:
statuses = divs[0].text.split("\n")
if len(divs) > 5:
return [divs[1].text, divs[2].text.split("\n")[1], divs[3].text.split("\n")[1], statuses[0], divs[4].text.split("\n")[1], statuses[1], divs[5].text.split("\n")[1]]
else:
return [divs[1].text, divs[2].text.split("\n")[1], divs[3].text.split("\n")[1], statuses[0], divs[4].text.split("\n")[1], statuses[1], divs[4].text.split("\n")[1]]
else:
return [divs[1].text, divs[2].text.split("\n")[1], divs[3].text.split("\n")[1], divs[0].text, divs[4].text.split("\n")[1]]
The above approach sticks as close to yours as I can. You will clearly need to rework the pandas code to reflect the slightly altered data structure.
Personally, I would invest even more time in clearly identifying the best definitions for the fields that represent each piece of data that you wish to retrieve (rather than as simply divs 0-5), and extract the text directly from them (rather than messing around with split). In this way you are far more likely to create robust code that can be maintained over time (perhaps not your goal).

How to work with Rows/Columns from CSV files?

I have about 10 columns of data in a CSV file that I want to get statistics on using python. I am currently using the import csv module to open the file and read the contents. But I also want to look at 2 particular columns to compare data and get a percentage of accuracy based on the data.
Although I can open the file and parse through the rows I cannot figure out for example how to compare:
Row[i] Column[8] with Row[i] Column[10]
My pseudo code would be something like this:
category = Row[i] Column[8]
label = Row[i] Column[10]
if(category!=label):
difference+=1
totalChecked+=1
else:
correct+=1
totalChecked+=1
The only thing I am able to do is to read the entire row. But I want to get the exact Row and Column of my 2 variables category and label and compare them.
How do I work with specific row/columns for an entire excel sheet?

convert both to pandas dataframes and compare similarly as this example. Whatever dataset your working on using the Pandas module, alongside any other necessary relevant modules, and transforming the data into lists and dataframes, would be first step to working with it imo.
I've taken the liberty and time/ effort to delve into this myself as it will be useful to me going forward. Columns don't have to have the same lengths at all in his example, so that's good. I've tested the below code (Python 3.8) and it works successfully.
With only a slight adaptations can be used for your specific data columns, objects and purposes.
import pandas as pd
A = pd.read_csv(r'C:\Users\User\Documents\query_sequences.csv') #dropped the S fom _sequences
B = pd.read_csv(r'C:\Users\User\Documents\Sequence_reference.csv')
print(A.columns)
print(B.columns)
my_unknown_id = A['Unknown_sample_no'].tolist() #Unknown_sample_no
my_unknown_seq = A['Unknown_sample_seq'].tolist() #Unknown_sample_seq
Reference_Species1 = B['Reference_sequences_ID'].tolist()
Reference_Sequences1 = B['Reference_Sequences'].tolist() #it was Reference_sequences
Ref_dict = dict(zip(Reference_Species1, Reference_Sequences1)) #it was Reference_sequences
Unknown_dict = dict(zip(my_unknown_id, my_unknown_seq))
print(Ref_dict)
print(Unknown_dict)
Ref_dict = dict(zip(Reference_Species1, Reference_Sequences1))
Unknown_dict = dict(zip(my_unknown_id, my_unknown_seq))
print(Ref_dict)
print(Unknown_dict)
import re
filename = 'seq_match_compare2.csv'
f = open(filename, 'a') #in his eg it was 'w'
headers = 'Query_ID, Query_Seq, Ref_species, Ref_seq, Match, Match start Position\n'
f.write(headers)
for ID, seq in Unknown_dict.items():
for species, seq1 in Ref_dict.items():
m = re.search(seq, seq1)
if m:
match = m.group()
pos = m.start() + 1
f.write(str(ID) + ',' + seq + ',' + species + ',' + seq1 + ',' + match + ',' + str(pos) + '\n')
f.close()
And I did it myself too, assuming your columns contained integers, and according to your specifications (As best at the moment I can). Its my first try [Its my first attempt without webscraping, so go easy]. You could use my code below for a benchmark of how to move forward on your question.
Basically it does what you want (give you the skeleton) and does this : "imports csv in python using pandas module, converts to dataframes, works on specific columns only in those df's, make new columns (results), prints results alongside the original data in the terminal, and saves to new csv. It's as as messy as my python is , but it works! personally (& professionally) speaking is a milestone for me and I Will hopefully be working on it at a later date to improve it readability, scope, functionality and abilities [as the days go by (from next weekend).]
# This is work in progress, (although it does work and does a job), and its doing that for you. there are redundant lines of code in it, even the lines not hashed out (because im a self teaching newbie on my weekends). I was just finishing up on getting the results printed to a new csv file (done too). You can see how you could convert your columns & rows into lists with pandas dataframes, and start to do calculations with them in Python, and get your results back out to a new CSV. It a start on how you can answer your question going forward
#ITS FOR HER TO DO MUCH MORE & BETTER ON!! BUT IT DOES IN BASIC TERMS WHAT SHE ASKED FOR.
import pandas as pd
from pandas import DataFrame
import csv
import itertools #redundant now'?
A = pd.read_csv(r'C:\Users\User\Documents\book6 category labels.csv')
A["Category"].fillna("empty data - missing value", inplace = True)
#A["Blank1"].fillna("empty data - missing value", inplace = True)
# ...etc
print(A.columns)
MyCat=A['Category'].tolist()
MyLab=A['Label'].tolist()
My_Cats = A['Category1'].tolist()
My_Labs = A['Label1'].tolist()
#Ref_dict0 = zip(My_Labs, My_Cats) #good to compare whole columns as block, Enumerate ZIP 19:06 01/06/2020 FORGET THIS FOR NOW, WAS PART OF A LATTER ATTEMPT TO COMPARE TEXT & MISSED TEXT WITH INTERGER FIELDS. DOESNT EFFECT PROGRAM
Ref_dict = dict(zip(My_Labs, My_Cats))
Compareprep = dict(zip(My_Cats, My_Labs))
Ref_dict = dict(zip(My_Cats, My_Labs))
print(Ref_dict)
import re #this is for string matching & comparison. redundant in my example here but youll need it to compare tables if strings.
#filename = 'CATS&LABS64.csv' # when i got to exporting part, this is redundant now
#csvfile = open(filename, 'a') #when i tried to export results/output it first time - redundant
print("Given Dataframe :\n", A)
A['Lab-Cat_diff'] = A['Category1'].sub(A['Label1'], axis=0)
print("\nDifference of score1 and score2 :\n", A)
#YOU CAN DO OTHER MATCHES, COMPARISONS AND CALCULTAIONS YOURSELF HERE AND ADD THEM TO THE OUTPUT
result = (print("\nDifference of score1 and score2 :\n", A))
result2 = print(A) and print(result)
def result22(result2):
for aSentence in result2:
df = pd.DataFrame(result2)
print(str())
return df
print(result2)
print(result22) # printing out the function itself 'produces nothing but its name of course
output_df = DataFrame((result2),A)
output_df.to_csv('some_name5523.csv')
Yes, i know, its by no means perfect At all, but wanted to give you the heads up about panda's and dataframes for doing what you want moving forward.

Dask read_csv: skip periodically ocurring lines

I want to use Dask to read in a large file of atom coordinates at multiple time steps. The format is called XYZ file, and it looks like this:
3
timestep 1
C 9.5464696279 5.2523477968 4.4976072664
C 10.6455075132 6.0351186102 4.0196547961
C 10.2970471574 7.3880736108 3.6390228968
3
timestep 2
C 9.5464696279 5.2523477968 4.4976072664
C 10.6455075132 6.0351186102 4.0196547961
C 10.2970471574 7.3880736108 3.6390228968
The first line contains the atom number, the second line is just a comment.
After that, the atoms are listed with their names and positions.
After all atoms are listed, the same is repeated for the next time step.
I would now like to load such a trajectory via dask.dataframe.read_csv.
However, I could not figure out how to skip the periodically ocurring lines containing the atom number and the comment. Is this actually possible?
Edit:
Reading this format into a Pandas Dataframe is possible via:
atom_nr = 3
def skip(line_nr):
return line_nr % (atom_nr + 2) < 2
pd.read_csv(xyz_filename, skiprows=skip, delim_whitespace=True,
header=None)
But it looks like the Dask dataframe does not support to pass a function to skiprows.
Edit 2:
MRocklin's answer works! Just for completeness, I write down the full code I used.
from io import BytesIO
import pandas as pd
import dask.bytes
import dask.dataframe
import dask.delayed
atom_nr = ...
filename = ...
def skip(line_nr):
return line_nr % (atom_nr + 2) < 2
def pandaread(data_in_bytes):
pseudo_file = BytesIO(data_in_bytes[0])
return pd.read_csv(pseudo_file, skiprows=skip, delim_whitespace=True,
header=None)
bts = dask.bytes.read_bytes(filename, delimiter=f"{atom_nr}\ntimestep".encode())
dfs = dask.delayed(pandaread)(bts)
sol = dask.dataframe.from_delayed(dfs)
sol.compute()
The only remaining question is: How do I tell dask to only compute the first n frames? At the moment it seems the full trajectory is read.

Short answer
No, neither pandas.read_csv nor dask.dataframe.read_csv offer this kind of functionality (to my knowledge)
Long Answer
If you can write code to convert some of this data into a pandas dataframe, then you can probably do this on your own with moderate effort using
dask.bytes.read_bytes
dask.dataframe.from_delayed
In general this might look something like the following:
values = read_bytes('filenames.*.txt', delimiter='...', blocksize=2**27)
dfs = [dask.delayed(load_pandas_from_bytes)(v) for v in values]
df = dd.from_delayed(dfs)
Each of the dfs correspond to roughly blocksize bytes of your data (and then up until the next delimiter). You can control how fine you want your partitions to be using this blocksize. If you want you can also select only a few of these dfs objects to get a smaller portion of your data
dfs = dfs[:5] # only the first five blocks of `blocksize` data

Sort a list based on values from dataframe

Is my approach here the right way to do it in Python? As I'm new to Python, I appreciate any feedback you can provide, especially if I'm way off here.
My task is to order a list of file names based on values from a dataset. Specifically, these are file names that I need to sort based on site information. The resulting list is the order in which the reports will be printed.
Site Information
key_info = pd.DataFrame({
'key_id': ['1010','3030','2020','5050','4040','4040']
, 'key_name': ['Name_A','Name_B','Name_C','Name_D','Name_E','Name_E']
, 'key_value': [1,2,3,4,5,6]
})
key_info = key_info[['key_id','key_name']].drop_duplicates()
key_info['key_id'] = key_info.key_id.astype('str').astype('int64')
Filenames
These are the file names I need to sort. In this example, I sort by just the key_id, but I assume I could easily add a column to site information and sort it by that as well.
filenames = ['1010_Filename','2020_Filename','3030_Filename','5050_Filename','4040_Filename']
Sorting
The resulting "filenames" is the final sorted list.
names_df = pd.DataFrame({'filename': filenames})
names_df['key_id'] = names_df.filename.str[:4].astype('str').astype('int64')
merged_df = pd.merge(key_info, names_df, on='key_id', how='right')
merged_df = merged_df.sort_values('key_id')
filenames = merged_df['filename'].tolist()
I'm looking for any solutions that might be better or more Pythonic. Or, if there is a more appropriate place to post "code review" questions.

I like your use of Pandas, but it isn't the most Pythonic as it uses data structures that are a superset of Python. Nevertheless, I think we can improve on what you have. I will show an improved version and I will show a completely native Python way to do it. Either is fine I suppose?
The strictly Python version is best for people who do know Pandas as there's a large learning curve associated with that.
Common
For both examples, let's assume a function like this:
def trim_filenames(filename):
return filename[0:4]
I use this in both examples.
Improvements
# Load the DataFrame and give it a proper index (I added some data)
key_info = pd.DataFrame(index=['2020','5050','4040','4040','6000','7000','1010','3030'], data={'key_name':['Name_C','Name_D','Name_E','Name_E','Name_F','Name_G','Name_A','Name_B'], 'key_value' :[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]})
# Eliminate duplicates and sort in one step
key_info = key_info.groupby(key_info.index).first()
filenames = ['1010_Filename','2020_Filename','3030_Filename','5050_Filename','4040_Filename']
names_df = pd.DataFrame({'filename': filenames})
# Let's give this an index too so we can match on the index (not the function call)
names_df.index=names_df.filename.transform(trim_filenames)
combined = pd.concat([key_info,names_df], axis=1)
combined matches by index, but there are some keys with no filenames. It looks like this now:
key_name key_value filename
1010 Name_A 7 1010_Filename
2020 Name_C 1 2020_Filename
3030 Name_B 8 3030_Filename
4040 Name_E 3 4040_Filename
5050 Name_D 2 5050_Filename
6000 Name_F 5 NaN
7000 Name_G 6 NaN
Now we drop the NaN columns and create the list of filenames:
combined.filename.dropna().values.tolist()
['1010_Filename', '2020_Filename', '3030_Filename', '4040_Filename', '5050_Filename']
Python Only Version (no framework)
key_info = {'2020' : {'key_name':'Name_C', 'key_value':1},'5050' : {'key_name':'Name_D', 'key_value':2},'4040' : {'key_name':'Name_E', 'key_value':3},'4040' : {'key_name':'Name_E', 'key_value':4},'6000' : {'key_name':'Name_F', 'key_value':5},'7000' : {'key_name':'Name_G', 'key_value':6},'1010' : {'key_name':'Name_A', 'key_value':7},'3030' : {'key_name':'Name_B', 'key_value':8}}
filenames = ['1010_Filename','2020_Filename','3030_Filename','5050_Filename','4040_Filename']
# Let's get a dictionary of filenames that is keyed by the same key as in key_info:
hashed_filenames = {}
for filename in filenames:
# Note here I'm using the function again
hashed_filenames[trim_filenames(filename)] = filename
# We'll store the new filenames in new_filenames:
new_filenames = []
# sort the key info and loop it
for key in sorted(key_info.keys()):
# for each key, if the key matches in the hashed_filenames, then add it to the list
if key in hashed_filenames:
new_filenames.append(hashed_filenames[key])
Summary
Both solutions are concise, and I like Pandas, but I like better something that is immediately readable by anyone that knows Python. The Python only solution (of course, they are both Python) is the one you should go with, in my opinion.

out_list = []
for x in key_info.key_id:
for f in filenames:
if str(x) in f:
out_list.append(f)
out_list
['1010_Filename', '3030_Filename', '2020_Filename', '5050_Filename', '4040_Filename']

Pandas append perfomance concat/append using "larger" DataFrames

The problem: I have data stored in csv file with the following columns data/id/value. I have 15 files each containing around 10-20mio rows. Each csv file covers a distinct period so the time indexes are non overlapping, but the columns are (new ids enter from time to time, old ones disappear). What I originally did was running the script without the pivot call, but then I run into memory issues on my local machine (only 8GB). Since there is lots of redundancy in each file, pivot seemd at first a nice way out (roughly 2/3 less data) but now perfomance kicks in. If I run the following script the concat function will run "forever" (I always interrupted manually so far after some time (2h>)). Concat/append seem to have limitations in terms of size (I have roughly 10000-20000 columns), or do I miss something here? Any suggestions?
import pandas as pd
path = 'D:\\'
data = pd.DataFrame()
#loop through list of raw file names
for file in raw_files:
data_tmp = pd.read_csv(path + file, engine='c',
compression='gzip',
low_memory=False,
usecols=['date', 'Value', 'ID'])
data_tmp = data_tmp.pivot(index='date', columns='ID',
values='Value')
data = pd.concat([data,data_tmp])
del data_tmp
EDIT I:To clarify, each csv file has about 10-20mio rows and three columns, after pivot is applied this reduces to about 2000 rows but leads to 10000 columns.
I can solve the memory issue by simply splitting the full-set of ids into subsets and run the needed calculations based on each subset as they are independent for each id. I know it makes me reload the same files n-times, where n is the number of subsets used, but this is still reasonable fast. I still wonder why append is not performing.
EDIT II: I have tried to recreate the file structure with a simulation, which is as close as possible to the actual data structure. I hope it is clear, I didn't spend to much time minimizing simulation-time, but it runs reasonable fast on my machine.
import string
import random
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import math
# Settings :-------------------------------
num_ids = 20000
start_ids = 4000
num_files = 10
id_interval = int((num_ids-start_ids)/num_files)
len_ids = 9
start_date = '1960-01-01'
end_date = '2014-12-31'
run_to_file = 2
# ------------------------------------------
# Simulation column IDs
id_list = []
# ensure unique elements are of size >num_ids
for x in range(num_ids + round(num_ids*0.1)):
id_list.append(''.join(
random.choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits) for _
in range(len_ids)))
id_list = set(id_list)
id_list = list(id_list)[:num_ids]
time_index = pd.bdate_range(start_date,end_date,freq='D')
chunk_size = math.ceil(len(time_index)/num_files)
data = []
# Simulate files
for file in range(0, run_to_file):
tmp_time = time_index[file * chunk_size:(file + 1) * chunk_size]
# TODO not all cases cover, make sure ints are obtained
tmp_ids = id_list[file * id_interval:
start_ids + (file + 1) * id_interval]
tmp_data = pd.DataFrame(np.random.standard_normal(
(len(tmp_time), len(tmp_ids))), index=tmp_time,
columns=tmp_ids)
tmp_file = tmp_data.stack().sortlevel(1).reset_index()
# final simulated data structure of the parsed csv file
tmp_file = tmp_file.rename(columns={'level_0': 'Date', 'level_1':
'ID', 0: 'Value'})
# comment/uncomment if pivot takes place on aggregate level or not
tmp_file = tmp_file.pivot(index='Date', columns='ID',
values='Value')
data.append(tmp_file)
data = pd.concat(data)
# comment/uncomment if pivot takes place on aggregate level or not
# data = data.pivot(index='Date', columns='ID', values='Value')

Using your reproducible example code, I can indeed confirm that the concat of only two dataframes takes a very long time. However, if you first align them (make the column names equal), then concatting is very fast:
In [94]: df1, df2 = data[0], data[1]
In [95]: %timeit pd.concat([df1, df2])
1 loops, best of 3: 18min 8s per loop
In [99]: %%timeit
....: df1b, df2b = df1.align(df2, axis=1)
....: pd.concat([df1b, df2b])
....:
1 loops, best of 3: 686 ms per loop
The result of both approaches is the same.
The aligning is equivalent to:
common_columns = df1.columns.union(df2.columns)
df1b = df1.reindex(columns=common_columns)
df2b = df2.reindex(columns=common_columns)
So this is probably the easier way to use when having to deal with a full list of dataframes.
The reason that pd.concat is slower is because it does more. E.g. when the column names are not equal, it checks for every column if the dtype has to be upcasted or not to hold the NaN values (which get introduced by aligning the column names). By aligning yourself, you skip this. But in this case, where you are sure to have all the same dtype, this is no problem.
That it is so much slower surprises me as well, but I will raise an issue about that.

Summary, three key performance drivers depending on the set-up:
1) Make sure datatype are the same when concatenating two dataframes
2) Use integer based column names if possible
3) When using string based columns, make sure to use the align method before concat is called as suggested by joris

As #joris mentioned, you should append all of the pivot tables to a list and then concatenate them all in one go. Here is a proposed modification to your code:
dfs = []
for file in raw_files:
data_tmp = pd.read_csv(path + file, engine='c',
compression='gzip',
low_memory=False,
usecols=['date', 'Value', 'ID'])
data_tmp = data_tmp.pivot(index='date', columns='ID',
values='Value')
dfs.append(data_tmp)
del data_tmp
data = pd.concat(dfs)