Reference library

Files & data

Read and write files safely; parse JSON, CSV, and common text formats.

4 matches
Files & data easy

How to Delete a File if it Exists in Python

Delete a file safely in Python using pathlib's Path.unlink, checking existence first to avoid errors.

pathlib file-deletion file-management
Python
from pathlib import Path

def delete_file_if_exists(file_path: str) -> bool:
    """Delete a file if it exists. Returns True if deleted, False if not found."""
    path = Path(file_path)
    if path.exists():
        path.unlink()
        print(f"Deleted: {path}")
        return True
    else:
        print(f"File not…
14 0 Open
Files & data medium

How to Scrape Headlines from a News Website Using Beautiful Soup in Python

Scrape headline text from a news website using requests and Beautiful Soup with a CSS selector.

web scraping beautifulsoup requests
Python
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

def scrape_headlines(url: str, selector: str) -> list:
    """
    Scrape headlines from a news website using Beautiful Soup.
    
    Args:
        url: The URL of the news website.
        selector: CSS selector for headline elements.
    
    Returns:
        List of h…
55 0 Open
Files & data easy

How to check file data in Python

Check if a file exists and is a regular file, then return its name, size, line count, and first line.

file pathlib metadata
Python
def check_file_data(file_path):
    from pathlib import Path
    path = Path(file_path)
    if not path.exists():
        return f"File '{file_path}' does not exist."
    if not path.is_file():
        return f"'{file_path}' is not a regular file."
    
    size = path.stat().st_size
    lines = path.read_text(encodin…
15 0 Open
Files & data medium

Scrape HTML Tables and Convert Them to CSV Using Beautiful Soup in Python

Scrape a Wikipedia table with Beautiful Soup and write the data to a CSV file using the csv module.

web scraping beautiful soup csv
Python
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import csv

url = "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)"
response = requests.get(url)
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')

tables = soup.find_all('table', {'class': 'wikitable'})

if tables:
    target_table = tables[2]
    rows =…
47 0 Open

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