DBF (VFP) to XLS (Excel) in pure Python

[kirby.urner at gmail.com]

Playing around with arcane tools to read those pesky DBF files (with
memo fields), like floating wine barrels cast off the sinking VFP
ship.

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/dbf
http://packages.python.org/dbf/dbf-module.html

Me threading on comp.lang.python:
http://bit.ly/e547Za

xlwt and xlrt for reading and writing Excel data, without needing
Excel, are also making Python attractive

Here's a code fragment giving the idea:

from os import path
from time import time
import dbf

def test2():
    thepath = path.normpath(<< file path >>)
    thefile = "shiptemp.dbf"
    pathfile = path.join(thepath, thefile)
    thedbf = dbf.VfpTable(pathfile)

    header_style = easyxf('font: name Arial, bold True, height 200;')

    book = Workbook()
    sheet1 = book.add_sheet('Sheet 1')

    for (i, name) in enumerate(thedbf.field_names):
        sheet1.write(0, i, name, header_style)

    for (i, thecol) in enumerate(thedbf.structure()):
        name, thetype = str(thecol).split()
        thelen, thedec = 0,0
        if "(" in thetype:
            if "," in thetype:
                thelen, thedec = [int(k) for k in
thetype[2:-1].split(",")]
            else:
                thelen, thedec = int(thetype[2:-1]), 0
        thetype = thetype[0]
        if thetype == "M":
            thelen = 100
        elif thelen == 0:
            thelen = 1
        colwidth = max(len(name), int(thelen))
        # print colwidth
        sheet1.col(i).width = colwidth * 310

    thedbf.top()
    messages = []
    for row in range(1, len(thedbf)):
        record = thedbf.next()
        for col in range(len(thedbf.field_names)):
            try:
                sheet1.row(row).write(col, record[col])
            except Exception:
                pass

     book.save("C:\\Documents and Settings\\HP_Administrator\\My
Documents\\Visual FoxPro Projects\\shiptemp.xls")

     thedbf.close()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    start = time()
    test2()
    end = time()
    print end - start

At the moment I'm unable to get the 1500 record x 156 column table
(with memos) to stay in
memory even with the disk file closed, which I understand is a feature
of this package
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/dbf/

>>> thetable = dbf.VfpTable(thefile)
>>> thetable[1]
<< data dump >>

>>> thetable.close(keep_table=True, keep_memos=True)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#105>", line 1, in <module>
    thetable.close(keep_table=True, keep_memos=True)
  File "C:/Python26/Lib/site-packages\dbf\tables.py", line 1141, in
close
    for record in yo:
  File "C:/Python26/Lib/site-packages\dbf\tables.py", line 676, in
next
    record = yo._table[yo._index]
  File "C:/Python26/Lib/site-packages\dbf\tables.py", line 817, in
__getitem__
    return yo._table[yo._index[value]]
  File "C:/Python26/Lib/site-packages\dbf\tables.py", line 655, in
__getitem__
    yo._meta.dfd.seek(location)
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'seek'

Same error with:

>>> thetable = dbf.VfpTable(thefile)
>>> thetable.close(keep_memos=True)

Python 2.6 / Win7

Kirby