In summary this chapter was an introduction to the XML and CSV data formats. In Python, CSV data can be processed using the Python csv
module or using the pandas
module depending on personal preference and the nature of the task. The csv
module can also be used to write output CSV data. (While it was not covered here, it is also possible to use the pandas module to output data in CSV and JSON formats.) Finally, XML data can be parsed using the Python xml.etree.ElementTree
module.
In the next chapter, you will have the chance to work on a much more applied project--extracting street names from addresses. In the next chapter, I will introduce regular expressions, a tool for matching and extracting patterns in text data.