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Lab 12

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19 views

Lab 12

Uploaded by

Arsalan Ahmed
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Programming Fundamentals (CT-153) Practical Workbook

LAB # 12

OBJECTIVE
Implement functions for creating, reading, updating, and deleting files.

THEORY
File handling is an important part of any web application.
Python has several functions for creating, reading, updating, and deleting files.

File Handling
The key function for working with files in Python is the open() function.
The open() function takes two parameters; filename, and mode.
There are four different methods (modes) for opening a file:
"r" - Read - Default value. Opens a file for reading, error if the file does not exist
"a" - Append - Opens a file for appending, creates the file if it does not exist
"w" - Write - Opens a file for writing, creates the file if it does not exist
"x" - Create - Creates the specified file, returns an error if the file exists
In addition you can specify if the file should be handled as binary or text mode
"t" - Text - Default value. Text mode
"b" - Binary - Binary mode (e.g. images)

Syntax
To open a file for reading it is enough to specify the name of the file:
f = open("demofile.txt")
The code above is the same as:
f = open("demofile.txt", "rt")
Because "r" for read, and "t" for text are the default values, you do not need to
specify them.
Note: Make sure the file exists, or else you will get an error.

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Programming Fundamentals (CT-153) Practical Workbook

Open a File on the Server


Assume we have the following file, located in the same folder as Python:
demofile.txt
Hello! Welcome to demofile.txt
This file is for testing purposes.
Good Luck!

To open the file, use the built-in open() function.


The open() function returns a file object, which has a read() method for reading the
content of the file:
Example
f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.read())

Read Only Parts of the File


By default the read() method returns the whole text, but you can also specify how
many characters you want to return:
Example
Return the 5 first characters of the file:
f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.read(5))

Read Lines
You can return one line by using the readline() method:
Example
Read one line of the file:
f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.readline())

By calling readline() two times, you can read the two first lines:
Example
Read two lines of the file:
f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.readline())
print(f.readline())
By looping through the lines of the file, you can read the whole file, line by line:

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Programming Fundamentals (CT-153) Practical Workbook

Example
Loop through the file line by line:
f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
for x in f:
print(x)

Close Files
It is a good practice to always close the file when you are done with it.
Example
Close the file when you are finish with it:
f = open("demofile.txt", "r")
print(f.readline())
f.close()
Note: You should always close your files, in some cases, due to buffering, changes
made to a file may not show until you close the file.

Write to an Existing File


To write to an existing file, you must add a parameter to the open() function:
"a" - Append - will append to the end of the file
"w" - Write - will overwrite any existing content
Example
Open the file "demofile2.txt" and append content to the file:
f = open("demofile2.txt", "a")
f.write("Now the file has more content!")
f.close()

#open and read the file after the appending:


f = open("demofile2.txt", "r")
print(f.read())
Example
Open the file "demofile3.txt" and overwrite the content:
f = open("demofile3.txt", "w")
f.write("Woops! I have deleted the content!")
f.close()

#open and read the file after the appending:


f = open("demofile3.txt", "r")
print(f.read())

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Programming Fundamentals (CT-153) Practical Workbook

Note: the "w" method will overwrite the entire file.

Create a New File


To create a new file in Python, use the open() method, with one of the following
parameters:
"x" - Create - will create a file, returns an error if the file exist
"a" - Append - will create a file if the specified file does not exist
"w" - Write - will create a file if the specified file does not exist
Example
Create a file called "myfile.txt":
f = open("myfile.txt", "x")
Result: a new empty file is created!
Example
Create a new file if it does not exist:
f = open("myfile.txt", "w")

Delete a File
To delete a file, you must import the OS module, and run its os.remove() function:
Example
Remove the file "demofile.txt":
import os
os.remove("demofile.txt")

Check if File exist:


To avoid getting an error, you might want to check if the file exists before you try to
delete it:
Example
Check if file exists, then delete it:
import os
if os.path.exists("demofile.txt"):
os.remove("demofile.txt")
else:
print("The file does not exist")
Delete Folder
To delete an entire folder, use the os.rmdir() method:

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Programming Fundamentals (CT-153) Practical Workbook

Example
Remove the folder "myfolder":
import os
os.rmdir("myfolder")
Note: You can only remove empty folders.

Lab Exercise:

1. Write a python program to create a file named employee.txt. Get input


employee id, employee name and his / her salary from user. Write this data
to the file and then read that file.

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