Convert multiple .txt files into single .csv file (python) - python-3.x

Question

I need to convert a folder with around 4,000 .txt files into a single .csv with two columns:
(1) Column 1: 'File Name' (as specified in the original folder);
(2) Column 2: 'Content' (which should contain all text present in the corresponding .txt file).
Here you can see some of the files I am working with.
The most similar question to mine here is this one (Combine a folder of text files into a CSV with each content in a cell) but I could not implement any of the solutions presented there.
The last one I tried was the Python code proposed in the aforementioned question by Nathaniel Verhaaren but I got the exact same error as the question's author (even after implementing some suggestions):
import os
import csv
dirpath = 'path_of_directory'
output = 'output_file.csv'
with open(output, 'w') as outfile:
csvout = csv.writer(outfile)
csvout.writerow(['FileName', 'Content'])
files = os.listdir(dirpath)
for filename in files:
with open(dirpath + '/' + filename) as afile:
csvout.writerow([filename, afile.read()])
afile.close()
outfile.close()
Other questions which seemed similar to mine (for example, Python: Parsing Multiple .txt Files into a Single .csv File?, Merging multiple .txt files into a csv, and Converting 1000 text files into a single csv file) do not solve this exact problem I presented (and I could not adapt the solutions presented to my case).

Answer 1

I had a similar requirement and so I wrote the following class
import os
import pathlib
import glob
import csv
from collections import defaultdict
class FileCsvExport:
"""Generate a CSV file containing the name and contents of all files found"""
def __init__(self, directory: str, output: str, header = None, file_mask = None, walk_sub_dirs = True, remove_file_extension = True):
self.directory = directory
self.output = output
self.header = header
self.pattern = '**/*' if walk_sub_dirs else '*'
if isinstance(file_mask, str):
self.pattern = self.pattern + file_mask
self.remove_file_extension = remove_file_extension
self.rows = 0
def export(self) -> bool:
"""Return True if the CSV was created"""
return self.__make(self.__generate_dict())
def __generate_dict(self) -> defaultdict:
"""Finds all files recursively based on the specified parameters and returns a defaultdict"""
csv_data = defaultdict(list)
for file_path in glob.glob(os.path.join(self.directory, self.pattern), recursive = True):
path = pathlib.Path(file_path)
if not path.is_file():
continue
content = self.__get_content(path)
name = path.stem if self.remove_file_extension else path.name
csv_data[name].append(content)
return csv_data
#staticmethod
def __get_content(file_path: str) -> str:
with open(file_path) as file_object:
return file_object.read()
def __make(self, csv_data: defaultdict) -> bool:
"""
Takes a defaultdict of {k, [v]} where k is the file name and v is a list of file contents.
Writes out these values to a CSV and returns True when complete.
"""
with open(self.output, 'w', newline = '') as csv_file:
writer = csv.writer(csv_file, quoting = csv.QUOTE_ALL)
if isinstance(self.header, list):
writer.writerow(self.header)
for key, values in csv_data.items():
for duplicate in values:
writer.writerow([key, duplicate])
self.rows = self.rows + 1
return True
Which can be used like so
...
myFiles = r'path/to/files/'
outputFile = r'path/to/output.csv'
exporter = FileCsvExport(directory = myFiles, output = outputFile, header = ['File Name', 'Content'], file_mask = '.txt')
if exporter.export():
print(f"Export complete. Total rows: {exporter.rows}.")
In my example directory, this returns
Export complete. Total rows: 6.
Note: rows does not count the header if present
This generated the following CSV file:
"File Name","Content"
"Test1","This is from Test1"
"Test2","This is from Test2"
"Test3","This is from Test3"
"Test4","This is from Test4"
"Test5","This is from Test5"
"Test5","This is in a sub-directory"
Optional parameters:
header: Takes a list of strings that will be written as the first line in the CSV. Default None.
file_mask: Takes a string that can be used to specify the file type; for example, .txt will cause it to only match .txt files. Default None.
walk_sub_dirs: If set to False, it will not search in sub-directories. Default True.
remove_file_extension: If set to False, it will cause the file name to be written with the file extension included; for example, File.txt instead of just File. Default True.