[ python-Feature Requests-1537721 ] csv module: add header row to DictWriter

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Feature Requests item #1537721, was opened at 2006-08-10 10:20
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Category: None
Group: None
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: ed_abraham (ed_abraham)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: csv module: add header row to DictWriter

Initial Comment:
I use the DictWriter class from the csv module, and
have to manually write the header row. A mindless chore
which I would like to see eliminated. Can we have a
writeheader method added to the class? Something like
the following:

def writeheader(self, headernames = {}):
    """Write a header row"""
    if not headernames:
        headernames = dict(zip(self.fieldnames,
self.fieldnames))
        self.writerow(headernames)

This would let you either use the fieldnames directly,
or supply your own pretty header names. 

Would be nice to have another keyword argument to
DictWriter, 'header = False'. If header was true, then
the __init__ method could call writeheader(). 


At the moment I have to write things like

fields = ['a','b','c']
w = csv.DictWriter(fid, fields)
w.writerow(dict(zip(fields, fields)))
for row in rows:
    w.writerow(row)

The proposed changes would let me write the simpler

w = csv.DictWriter(fid, ['a','b','c'], header = True)
for row in rows:
    w.writerow(row)


A problem is that including a new keyword argument
would break code which used position to fill the
keyword arguments and to supply arguments through *args
to the writer class.

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