Executing Visual Basic Macro (from personal macro workbook) in Python - python

I'm trying to execute a visual basic script that is located in my personal macro workbook on an excel file that I'm creating. Here's what I have so far:
import os
import win32com.client
df2.to_excel("Apartments.xlsx")
xl=win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
xl.Workbooks.open(filename="C:\Users\my\full\path\Apartments.xlsx", ReadOnly=1)
xl.Application.Run("Apartments.xlsx!create_chart.create_chart_proc")
It's throwing an error when opening the excel file on line 5, I have a feeling line 6 won't work either because it comes from my personal macro book. Anyone have ideas on how to get it to function?
PS. my module name is "create_chart" and my macro name is "create_chart_proc"

It would help if you said what error you are getting, and I know that this path
"C:\Users\my\full\path\Apartments.xlsx"
is not really what is in your code. But \ inside a string has a special meaning in Python (for example \n is a newline and \f is a formfeed). Whether your \ is interpreted as you intend depends on the character that comes after it. When you use Windows paths in Python it's generally less error-prone to use a raw string.
r"C:\Users\my\full\path\Apartments.xlsx"
When you get that line to work, if the next line gives trouble, then post that as a separate question.

I got the first part of the code to work simply running the code as follows:
xl.workbooks.open("C:\Users\my\full\path\Apartments.xlsx")
Posted a separate question to get the macro to work correctly.

Related

Strange behavior when trying to create and write to a text file on macOS [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Convert UTF-8 with BOM to UTF-8 with no BOM in Python
(7 answers)
Closed last year.
I'm opening a plain text file, parsing it, and adding different lines to existing, empty string variables. I add these variables into a new variable that is a multi-line fstring. Trying to write the data to a new text file is not behaving as expected.
Reading the original file works fine. Text is properly parsed, variables populated.
The multi-line fstring variable seems fine. Prints normally. Even tried formatting it different ways which I show below.
When writing to a new file, that's where the strangeness starts. I've tried 2 ways:
Straight coding the open function with w or w+
Adding the above to a function and using that inside main()
The file is saved to disk with the correct name. Trying to double-click open in Finder produces nothing. Right-click to open produces nothing. Trying to move to trash with command+delete gives an error:
It sounds like the file goes to trash, but as the file disappears from the folder a new one is created with the same name in its place.
If I try to open in TextMate via File > Open, it opens as a blank file with no errors.
Since I can't get rid of the file, I have to delete the directory and create the directory again with the same name, or force delete in Terminal using rm. Restarting the system does not help. Relaunching Finder does nothing. Saving text files from other apps works fine. Directory is chmod 755.
If I copy an existing text file into the output directory, rename it to what the file is expected to be named, and let python overwrite the contents, it doesn't work either. The file modification date changes (and I see the file "blink" in Finder) but the contents remain the same. However, the file is not corrupted and opens normally.
If I do the same but delete the text inside of the copied file first, then run the script, python writes no data to the file, I can't open it by double-clicking on it, and I get error -43 again with the odd non-trashing behavior.
The strangest thing is this: if I add another with open() at the end of the script, and open the file that was just created and supposedly written to, and print its contents, the contents print. It's like when the script ends the file contents are being removed or its being corrupted somehow. Tried to close the file inside the script even though it's not needed, but same behavior persists.
Code:
Here's the code for writing:
FORMAT='utf-8'
OUTPUT_DIR = '/Path/To/SaveFolder'
# as a function
def write_to_file(content, fpath, name):
the_file = os.path.join(fpath, name)
with open(the_file, 'w+', encoding=FORMAT) as t:
t.write(content)
def main():
print(f" Writing File...\n")
filename = f"{pcode}_{author}_{title}_text.txt"
write_to_file(multiline_var, OUTPUT_DIR, filename)
# or hard coded in main()
def main():
print(f" Writing File...\n")
filename = f"{pcode}_{author}_{title}_text.txt"
the_file = os.path.join(OUTPUT_DIR, filename)
with open(the_file, 'w+', encoding=FORMAT) as t:
t.write(multiline_var)
I have tried using w w+ wt and wt+ and with and without encoding='utf-8'
Here is an example of multi-line fstring variable:
# using triple quotes
multiline_var = f"""
[PROJ-{pcode}] {full_title} by {author}
{description}
{URL}
{DIVIDER_1}
{TEXT_BLURB}
Some text here and then {SOME_MORE_TEXT}"
{DIVIDER_1}
{SOME_LINK}
"""
# or inside parens
multiline_var = (
f"[PROJ-{pcode}] {full_title} by {author}\n"
f"{description}\n\n"
f"{URL}\n"
f"{DIVIDER_1}\n"
f"{TEXT_BLURB}\n\n"
f"Some text here and then {SOME_MORE_TEXT}\n"
f"{DIVIDER_1}\n\n"
f"{SOME_LINK}"
)
Using exiftool on the text file shows the following, so it looks the data is there but must be corrupted:
File Size : 1797 bytes
File Modification Date/Time : 2021:12:31 15:55:39-05:00
File Access Date/Time : 2021:12:31 15:58:13-05:00
File Inode Change Date/Time : 2021:12:31 15:55:39-05:00
File Permissions : -rw-r--r--
File Type : TXT
File Type Extension : txt
MIME Type : text/plain
MIME Encoding : utf-8
Byte Order Mark : No
Newlines : Unix LF
Line Count : 55
Word Count : 181
Not sure what I'm doing wrong. VScode shows no syntax errors in the script. There are no errors in Terminal when running the script. Have I made some simple mistake in the above code? Maybe the fstring variable is causing a problem?
Thanks to #bnaecker for leading me to the solution to this problem.
It appeared that when creating/writing to a text file with a long name, Python can corrupt it. Not sure why, as I save long names for images with Python image libraries all the time. Using a short name like "MyFile.txt" it worked just fine, but that was a red herring.
I have updated this post with my journey to the final solution for using the long names that are needed for my project, though I'm not sure why the problem exists.
First Attempts:
So far creating using a short name and then renaming to a long one.... attempts have failed. I did notice that python is locking the file it creates and never unlocks it. Not sure if this is the problem. Setting chflags with os.system('chflags nouchg') command does not work, not even with sudo, and not even in the Terminal doing it manually.
Using os.rename() in Python corrupts the file
Using os.system('mv oldFile.txt newFile.txt') corrupts the file
Manually using mv command in Terminal corrupts the file
Manually changing the filename in the Finder does not (wtf?)
I kept looking for workarounds but nothing did the job.
Round 2:
Progress!
After much tinkering, I discovered a hidden character inside the file. I ran cat /path/longfilename.txt in Terminal, selected and copied the output and pasted into VScode. Here is what I saw:
Somehow a hidden character is getting into the project code number.
Pasting it into a Unicode search engine it came up as a ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE also known in Unicode as EF BB BF. However, when pasting this symbol into TextMate it shows up as <U+FEFF> which is?...
The Byte Order Mark!
Opening a normal utf-8 text file in a hex editor also shows the files starting with EFBBBF for the BOM.
Now, the text file being read and parsed at first has no blank lines to start the file, so I added a line break, and also tried adding some spaces. This time when writing the file I could open it, however, after sending it to the trash, the same behavior occurred and the file was broken again. It seems that because other corrupted versions were in the trash, it added the symbol back to the file name for some reason.
So what appears to be happening, for whatever reason, when Python opens the text file I'm parsing that has no line break at the top, it seems to be grabbing the BOM from the file and adding that to the first variable which is grabbing the first line of the text file. Since that text is a number code that starts the file name, the BOM symbol is being added to the file name as well as the code inside the text file.
Just... wow
The Current Solution:
I have to leave a blank line at the start of the text file that I'm opening and parsing and a simple line break won't do it. I have no idea why this is. I added some spaces for good measure because randomly the BOM would be added to the variable and filename again. So far (knock on wood) as long as the first line of that initial file has some spaces and then a line break, and previous corrupted files have been deleted from the trash, a long file name can be used for all the files I'm creating and writing to without any problems.
This corruption even persists if I remove the encoding flag from both of the open functions I'm using (one to read and parse, the other to create and write).
If anyone knows why this is happening, please share. I've never seen it mentioned before. I'm not sure if it's a python 3.8 bug, a mac OS bug, the way TextMate wrote the original file, or a combination of these.
Correct Solution:
Thanks to #tripleee for the proper way to handle this, as I don't remember seeing this before, though I haven't been using python for very long.
In order to ignore the BOM, reading in the text file to be parsed with an encoding='utf-8-sig' does the job. Seems to be why it exists. :)
Problem solved.

Syntax error when trying to open a file through Python 3 Command Shell

So I am learning Python through Udemy tutorials and now I need to open a file through CMD(CMD is opened on folder I need) and when I am typing function for opening file it says syntax error, but I have made everything good what a guy on tutorials says, I really don't know what what should I do, I checked all of the forums and still cant find the answer.
Here are some screenshots:
Couple of issues:
1.Your text file is called "example.txt.txt" instead of "example.txt"
2.The "example.txt","r" should be surrounded with brackets () instead of <>. These symbols look similar in cmd and are easy to confuse.
#instead of
file = open<"example.txt","r">
#use
file = open("example.txt","r")
This should fix your problem; let me know if it does.
You have to use parenthesss () not <>
file = open("example.txt","r")
check https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/inputoutput.html#reading-and-writing-files

Python subprocess.call with multiline string EOF

I've hit a issue that I don't really understand how to overcome. I'm trying to create a subprocess in python to run another python script. Not too difficult. The issue is I'm unable to get around is EOF error when a python file includes a super long string.
Here's an example of what my files look like.
Subprocess.py:
### call longstr.py from the primary pyfile
subprocess.call(['python longstr.py'], shell = True)
Longstr.py
### called from subprocess.py
### the actual string is a lot longer; this is an example to illustrate how the string is formatted
lngstr = """here is a really long
string (which has many n3w line$ and "characters")
that are causing the python file to state the file is ending early
"""
print lngstr
Printer error in terminal
SyntaxError: EOF while scanning triple-quoted string literal
As a work around, I tried to remove all linebreaks as well as all spaces to see if it was due to it being multi-line. That still returned the same result.
My assumption is that when the subprocess is running and the shell is doing something with the file contents, when the new line is reached the shell itself is freaking out and that's what's terminating the process; not the file.
What is the correct workaround for having subprocess run a file like this?
Thank you for your help.
Answering my own question here; my problem was that I didn't file.close() before trying to execute a subprocess.call.
If you encounter this problem, and are working with recently written files this could be your issue too. Thank you to everyone who read or responded to this thread.

Playing Audio with subprocess.call in Python

I wanted to play a .wav file, without using external modules, and i read i could do that using this:
def play(audio_file_path):
subprocess.call(["ffplay", "-nodisp", "-autoexit", /Users/me/Downloads/sample.wav])
I however get:
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
If i use os.path.realpath to get the absolute path of the file, i get just the same thing. (The path i see at get info)
Environment is OSX, Python 2.7
Can someone tell me what i am doing wrong? I am new to Python (and to Programming).
There are multiple problems.
Indentation
Code inside the function should be indented, to show that it is part of the function
File name should be in a quotes
It should be a string
It should be:
def play(audio_file_path):
subprocess.call(["ffplay", "-nodisp", "-autoexit", "/Users/me/Downloads/sample.wav"])

Syntax for input redirection in IDLE

I need to enter the contents of a text (.txt) file as input for a Python (.py) file. Assuming the name of the text file is TextFile and the name of the Python file PythonFile, then the code should be as follows:
python PythonFile.py < TextFile.txt
Yet, when I try to do this in IDLE and type in
import PythonFile < TextFile,
IDLE gives me an invalid syntax message, pointing to the < sign. I tried all sorts of variations on this theme (i.e.,using or not using the file name extensions), but still got the same invalid-syntax message. How is the syntax different for input redirection in IDLE?
If it works in the command line, then why do you want to do this in IDLE? There are ways to achieve a similar result using, for example, subprocess, but a better way would be to refactor PythonFile.py so that you can call a function from it, e.g.:
>>> import PythonFile
>>> PythonFile.run_with_input('TextFile.txt')
If you post the contents of PythonFile.py, we might be able to help you do this.

Categories