Page 139 - PYTHON-12

The solution to the above problem is CSV (Fig. 4.3(b)). Thus, the CSV organizes data into a structured
form and, hence, the proper and systematic organization of this large amount of data is done by
CSV. Since CSV files formats are of plain text format, it makes it very easy for website developers to
create applications that implement CSV.

Fig. 4.3(b): CSV as a Solution

CSV files are commonly used because they are easy to read and manage, small in size, and fast
to process/transfer. Because of these salient features, they are frequently used in software
applications, ranging anywhere from online e-commerce stores to mobile apps to desktop tools.
For example, Magento, an e-commerce platform, is known for its support of CSV.

Thus, in a nutshell, the several advantages that are offered by CSV files are as follows:
• CSV is faster to handle.

• CSV is smaller in size.
• CSV is easy to generate and import onto a spreadsheet or database.

• CSV is human readable and easy to edit manually.
• CSV is simple to implement and parse.

• CSV is processed by almost all existing applications.
After understanding the concept and importance of using CSV files, we will now discuss the read
and write operations on CSV files.

4.15 CSV FILE HANDLING IN PYTHON

For working with CSV files in Python, there is an inbuilt module called CSV. It is used to read and
Computer Science with Python–XII 4.10 CSV module can handle CSV files correctly regardless of the operating system on which the files
write tabular data in CSV format.
Therefore, to perform read and write operation with CSV file, we must import CSV module.

were created.

Along with this module, open() function is used to open a CSV file, and return file object. We load
the module in the usual way using import:
>>> import csv