How To Export A Dictionary To A CSV File In Python

In this tutorial, we will be discussing how to export a dictionary to a CSV file in Python. CSV files are a popular file format for data manipulation due to their simplicity and easy readability.

Python, with its powerful libraries such as csv and pandas, provides a seamless way to work with CSV files. We’ll go through the steps to export a dictionary to a CSV file using both the csv and pandas libraries.

Step 1: Import the required libraries

The first step is to import the necessary libraries. In this tutorial, we will be using the csv and pandas libraries. Make sure to have them installed in your system. You can install the pandas library using the following command:
pip install pandas
Now, import the required libraries in your Python script:

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import csv
import pandas as pd

Step 2: Create a dictionary

Next, we need to create a dictionary that we’ll be exporting to a CSV file. For this tutorial, let’s create a simple dictionary with some data as shown below:

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sample_data = {
    'Name': ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie', 'David'],
    'Age': [25, 30, 35, 40],
    'City': ['New York', 'San Francisco', 'Los Angeles', 'Chicago']
}

Step 3: Exporting the dictionary using the csv library

To export the dictionary using the csv library, we need to perform the following steps:

  1. Open a new CSV file in write mode using the open() function.
  2. Create a csv.writer object.
  3. Write the header (dictionary keys) to the CSV file.
  4. Write the rows (dictionary values) to the CSV file.
  5. Close the CSV file.

Here is the code:

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with open('output_csv_using_csv_library.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile:
    csv_writer = csv.writer(csvfile)
 
    # Writing header
    header = sample_data.keys()
    csv_writer.writerow(header)
 
    # Writing rows
    rows = zip(*sample_data.values())
    csv_writer.writerows(rows)

Output:

output_csv_using_csv_library.csv

Name,Age,City
Alice,25,New York
Bob,30,San Francisco
Charlie,35,Los Angeles
David,40,Chicago

Step 4: Exporting the dictionary using the pandas library

Exporting a dictionary to a CSV file using the pandas library is quite straightforward. You can achieve this with the following three steps:

  1. Convert the dictionary to a DataFrame using pd.DataFrame() function.
  2. Save the DataFrame to a CSV file using the to_csv() method.
  3. Provide the name of the CSV file as an argument to the to_csv() method.

Here is the code:

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# Converting dictionary to DataFrame
data_frame = pd.DataFrame(sample_data)
 
# Writing DataFrame to a CSV file
data_frame.to_csv('output_csv_using_pandas_library.csv', index=False)

Output:

output_csv_using_pandas_library.csv

Name,Age,City
Alice,25,New York
Bob,30,San Francisco
Charlie,35,Los Angeles
David,40,Chicago

Full Code

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import csv
import pandas as pd
 
sample_data = {
    'Name': ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie', 'David'],
    'Age': [25, 30, 35, 40],
    'City': ['New York', 'San Francisco', 'Los Angeles', 'Chicago']
}
 
# Exporting using csv library
with open('output_csv_using_csv_library.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile:
    csv_writer = csv.writer(csvfile)
 
    # Writing header
    header = sample_data.keys()
    csv_writer.writerow(header)
 
    # Writing rows
    rows = zip(*sample_data.values())
    csv_writer.writerows(rows)
 
# Exporting using pandas library
data_frame = pd.DataFrame(sample_data)
data_frame.to_csv('output_csv_using_pandas_library.csv', index=False)

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we discussed two ways to export a dictionary to a CSV file in Python. We first used the built-in csv library and then the powerful pandas library.

While both methods work well, using pandas provides a more efficient and convenient approach, especially when working with larger datasets or more complex data manipulation tasks.