[Tutor] Question about writing to Excel with slavic characters

[Marko Limbek]

Hi Walter

I understand, thank you. Maybe I am trying to do what is not meant to be done.
I tried as you suggested

mySavReaderObject = SavReader(savFileName)
mySavReaderObject.getNumberofVariables(savFileName,
mySavReaderObject.fh, mySavReaderObject.spssio)

but it won't work

  File "C:\Dropbox\Exc_MarkoL_Zenel\Python\crosstabs\src\src\rw.py",
line 715, in <module>
    mySavReaderObject.getNumberofVariables(savFileName,
mySavReaderObject.fh, mySavReaderObject.spssio)
AttributeError: 'SavReader' object has no attribute 'spssio'

So the methods must really be somewhat internal.

The information that I get in
numVars, nCases, varNames, varTypes, printTypesFile, printTypeLabels, varWids
is not sufficient to me.

What I need from this programme are the labels that are in the column
'Values'  in SPSS 'Variable view'.
What is the most important is that unicode characters like 'č', 'š',
'ž', in the labels can be read. This is the only reason why I am
touching this programme.
I will forward the question to Albert.

Thank you,

Marko






On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Walter Prins <wprins at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Marko,
>
> I'm going out on a limb here as I know next to nothing about either
> SPSS or Albert-Jan's wrapper module, and so with that caveat, some
> comments/observations:
>
> On 8 March 2012 14:59, Marko Limbek <marko.limbek at valicon.net> wrote:
>> I overcame commenting. I managed to read my own file and print it. Now
>> I am trying to use method getNumberofVariables()  but unsuccesfully.
>> First way
>>
>> SavReader(savFileName).getNumberofVariables()
>>
>> gives me this error
>>
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>  File "C:\Dropbox\Exc_MarkoL_Zenel\Python\crosstabs\src\src\rw.py",
>> line 660, in <module>
>>    SavReader(savFileName).getNumberofVariables()
>> TypeError: getNumberofVariables() takes exactly 3 arguments (1 given)
>>
>>
>>
>> Second way
>>
>> getNumberofVariables(savFileName, fh, spssio)
>>
>> gives me this error
>>
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>  File "C:\Dropbox\Exc_MarkoL_Zenel\Python\crosstabs\src\src\rw.py",
>> line 660, in <module>
>>    getNumberofVariables(savFileName, fh, spssio)
>> NameError: name 'getNumberofVariables' is not defined
>
> The short answer:
> ==============
> Don't use getNumberofVariables, use the script as demonstrated at the
> bottom of the script in the "if __name__ == "__main__" section.  I
> suppose something like this should do (I've modified it slightly to
> make it a bit more obvious what's happening):
>
> ## ----- Get some basic file info
> savFileName = r"C:\Program
> Files\IBM\SPSS\Statistics\19\Samples\English\Employee data.sav"
> mySavReaderObj = SavReader(savFileName)
> numVars, nCases, varNames, varTypes, printTypesFile, printTypeLabels,
> varWids = \
>    mySavReaderObj.getSavFileInfo()
> #Now the number of variables is presumably in numVars...
>
>
> The longer answer:
> ==============
> Firstly, getNumberofVariables() is defined as a class instance method.
>  This means you can only ever call it on an object instance of that
> class. It is not a standalone function that can be called freestanding
> as you tried to do in your latter attempt.  That is why you got the
> "not defined" error -- There is no freestanding function by that name
> (even if there happens to be a /method/ by that name inside the
> SavReader class.) so Python complained as such.
>
> Your prior attempt, which as you noticed requires to have parameters
> fh and spssio supplied appears to me to be effectively somewhat of an
> internal/private/helper method that is written in the style of a
> function, so consequently the method has no external dependencies on
> any state in the object/class and hence has to have the spssio and fh
> supplied when it's called.  You can see elsewhere in the class when
> this method is called, the object itself keeps track of the fh and the
> sspsio and so passes these into the method as required.
>
> >From this you can infer that you'd be able to do the same and thus
> successfully call getNumberofVariables() by retrieving the fh and
> sspsio from your SavReader object (e.g. what I called mySavReaderObj
> above), by passing in mySavReaderObj.fh and mySavREaderObj.spssio when
> calling mySavReaderObj.getNumberofVariables().  But, as per the short
> answer, you probably don't want to do that.
>
> As an aside it also then follows it would be possible to
> rewrite/refactor the getNumberofVariables() method (and indeed several
> others) to remove the fh and sspsio parameters, by having them picked
> up directly from the object instance when required.   Debateably, it
> might be an improvement that makes the code a bit more object oriented
> and less surprising to use.
>
> HTH,
>
> Walter
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