How to process excel files data in chunks with Python?


Introduction

It seems that the world is ruled by Excel. I've been surprised in my data engineering work to see how many of my colleagues are using Excel as a critical tool for making decisions. While I'm not a big fan of MS Office and their excel spread sheets, i will still show you a neat trick to handle large excel spread sheets effectively.

How to do it..

Before we jump into the program directly, let us understand few basics on dealing excel spreadsheets with Pandas.

1. Installation. Go ahead and install openpyxl and xlwt. If you are unsure if it is installed or not just the available packages by using pip freeze or pip list from a python terminal.

We will be first creating an excel spread sheet by passing tuple of data.Then we will load the data into pandas dataframe. We will finally write a dataframe data to a new work book.

import xlsxwriter
import pandas as pd

2.Create an Excel spread sheet with small data. we will have a small function to write the dictionary data to a excel spreadsheet. All the code logic is define at each step.

# Function : write_data_to_files
def write_data_to_files(inp_data, inp_file_name):
"""
function : create a csv file with the data passed to this code
args : inp_data : tuple data to be written to the target file
file_name : target file name to store the data
return : none
assumption : File to be created and this code are in same directory.
"""
print(f" *** Writing the data to - {inp_file_name}")

# Create a Workbook.
workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook(inp_file_name)

# add a worksheet.
worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()

# Start from the first cell. Rows and columns are zero indexed.
row = 0
col = 0

# read the input data and write them in rows and columns
for player, titles in inp_data:
worksheet.write(row, col, player)
worksheet.write(row, col + 1, titles)
row += 1

# close the workbook.
workbook.close()
print(f" *** Completed writing the data to - {inp_file_name}")


# Function : excel_functions_with_pandas
def excel_functions_with_pandas(inp_file_name):
"""
function : Quick overview of functions you can apply on excel with pandas
args : inp_file_name : input excel spread sheet.
return : none
assumption : Input excel spreadsheet and this code are in same directory.
"""
data = pd.read_excel(inp_file_name)

# print top 2 rows
print(f" *** Displaying top 2 rows of - {inp_file_name} \n {data.head()} ")

# look at the data types
print(f" *** Displaying info about {inp_file_name} - {data.info()}")

# Create a new spreadsheet "Sheet2" and write data into it.
new_players_info = pd.DataFrame(data=[
{"players": "new Roger Federer", "titles": 20},
{"players": "new Rafael Nadal", "titles": 20},
{"players": "new Novak Djokovic", "titles": 17},
{"players": "new Andy Murray", "titles": 3}], columns=["players", "titles"])

new_data = pd.ExcelWriter(inp_file_name)
new_players_info.to_excel(new_data, sheet_name="Sheet2")
if __name__ == '__main__':
# Define your file name and data
file_name = "temporary_file.xlsx"

# tuple data for storage
file_data = (['player', 'titles'], ['Federer', 20], ['Nadal', 20], ['Djokovic', 17], ['Murray', 3])

# write the file_data to file_name
# write_data_to_files(file_data, file_name)

# # Read excel file into pandas and apply functions.
# excel_functions_with_pandas(file_name)


if __name__ == '__main__':
# Define your file name and data
file_name = "temporary_file.xlsx"

# tuple data for storage
file_data = (['player', 'titles'], ['Federer', 20], ['Nadal', 20], ['Djokovic', 17], ['Murray', 3])

# write the file_data to file_name
# write_data_to_files(file_data, file_name)

# # Read excel file into pandas and apply functions.
# excel_functions_with_pandas(file_name)

Output

*** Writing the data to - temporary_file.xlsx
*** Completed writing the data to - temporary_file.xlsx
*** Displaying top 2 rows of - temporary_file.xlsx
player titles
0 Federer 20
1 Nadal 20
2 Djokovic 17
3 Murray 3
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 4 entries, 0 to 3
Data columns (total 2 columns):
# Column Non-Null Count Dtype
--- ------ -------------- -----
0 player 4 non-null object
1 titles 4 non-null int64
dtypes: int64(1), object(1)
memory usage: 192.0+ bytes
*** Displaying info about temporary_file.xlsx - None

Now when dealing with large csv files we have quite a bit of options including chunks to process them in chunks, however for the excel spread sheets Pandas doesn't provide chunks option by default.

So below program is quite helpful if you want to process excel spread sheet in chunks.

Example

def global_excel_to_db_chunks(file_name, nrows):
"""
function : handle excel spreadsheets in chunks
args : inp_file_name : input excel spread sheet.
return : none
assumption : Input excel spreadsheet and this code are in same directory.
"""
chunks = []
i_chunk = 0

# The first row is the header. We have already read it, so we skip it.
skiprows = 1
df_header = pd.read_excel(file_name, nrows=1)

while True:
df_chunk = pd.read_excel(
file_name, nrows=nrows, skiprows=skiprows, header=None)
skiprows += nrows

# When there is no data, we know we can break out of the loop.
if not df_chunk.shape[0]:
break
else:
print(
f" ** Reading chunk number {i_chunk} with {df_chunk.shape[0]} Rows")
# print(f" *** Reading chunk {i_chunk} ({df_chunk.shape[0]} rows)")
chunks.append(df_chunk)
i_chunk += 1

df_chunks = pd.concat(chunks)

# Rename the columns to concatenate the chunks with the header.
columns = {i: col for i, col in enumerate(df_header.columns.tolist())}
df_chunks.rename(columns=columns, inplace=True)
df = pd.concat([df_header, df_chunks])

print(f' *** Reading is Completed in chunks...')

if __name__ == '__main__':
print(f" *** Gathering & Displaying Stats on the excel spreadsheet ***")
file_name = 'Sample-sales-data-excel.xls'
stats = pd.read_excel(file_name)
print(f" ** Total rows in the spreadsheet are - {len(stats.index)} Rows")

# process the excel file in chunks of 1000 rows at a time.
global_excel_to_db_chunks(file_name, 1000)


*** Gathering & Displaying Stats on the excel spreadsheet ***
** Total rows in the spreadsheet are - 9994 Rows
** Reading chunk number 0 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 1 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 2 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 3 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 4 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 5 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 6 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 7 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 8 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 9 with 994 Rows
*** Reading is Completed in chunks...

Output

*** Gathering & Displaying Stats on the excel spreadsheet ***
** Total rows in the spreadsheet are - 9994 Rows
** Reading chunk number 0 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 1 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 2 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 3 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 4 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 5 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 6 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 7 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 8 with 1000 Rows
** Reading chunk number 9 with 994 Rows
*** Reading is Completed in chunks...

Updated on: 09-Nov-2020

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