Python code to read csv into dictionary

Aug 19, 2017 Ayesh Alshukri

This code is an example of how to read a csv file into a dictionary data structure. This code reads two values from the input csv, an ID and a date. The date is stored as a datetime object in the dictionary. The code is made more generalisable by using three parameters related to the input csv file. A parameters is used to identify each of the column numbers for the id and date, and also the the format of the date.

def readFileAsDictionary(fileName,
			 columnID,columnDate,
			 inputDateFormat='%d/%m/%Y'):
	inputFileList=[]
	returnDictionary={}

	with open(fileName, 'rb') as f:
	    reader = csv.reader(f)
	    next(reader)#skip header
	    inputFileList = list(reader)

	for item in inputFileList:
		datetime_object = datetime.datetime.strptime(
			item[columnDate],inputDateFormat)
		returnDictionary[item[columnID]]=datetime_object

	return returnDictionary