Question

I have a tab-delimited txt file with rows separated by tabs, and rows separated by newlines. This is what it actually looks like:

476502291\t\tLF3139812164\t\tTitle 1\tKids & Family\nGRAV_2011\t\tThe Full Picture\tIndependent\n [...etc...]

Note that sometimes values are separated by two tabs instead of one.

I need to insert this into a mysql table, which should result in the following:

ID             title               genre
476502291      Title 1             Kids & Family
GRAV_2011      The Full Picture    Independent

How would I read a tab-separated txt file and run a for loop in order to insert values into a table named vendor using MySQLdb?

>>> import MySQLdb
>>> conn = MySQLdb.connect (host = "localhost",
                             user = "me",
                             passwd = "password",
                             db = "my-db")
>>> cursor = conn.cursor ()
>>> # for loop  # how to read from the txt file to insert it as required?
>>>     # cursor.execute (INSERT...)
>>> conn.commit()
>>> conn.close()

Answer 1

Step 1. Read the csv module. http://docs.python.org/library/csv.html. This does what you want.

with open('your_data_file.dat','r') as source:
    rdr= csv.reader( source, delimiter='\t', quotechar='')
    for row in rdr:
        # you have your columns with which to do your insert.
conn.commit()

Step 2. Read up on context managers, also.

from contextlib import closing

with open('your_data_file.dat','r') as source:
    rdr= csv.reader( source, delimiter='\t', quotechar='')
    with closing(conn.cursor()) as cursor:
        for row in rdr:
            # you have your columns with which to do your insert.
conn.commit()

This will assure that cursors and files are properly closed.