How To Import a CSV (or TSV) file into a Django Model

October 11th, 2011 · MTF · Uncategorized 12 comments - Tags: django, python, tech

How to import a CSV file into Django

Recently I downloaded a US zip code data file in comma separated (CSV) format. Below are the steps and python script that I used to import that data into a django model for my site Wantbox.com.

The Steps to Import CSV Data into Django:

Create your django model (mine is called “ZipCode”, see below).
Create a python script called “load_data.py” with your correct django project and directory info (see mine below).
Put the CSV file and â€œload_data.pyâ€ script in the same directory.
From that directory run: python ./load_data.pyâ€

That’s it. For a CSV file with about 42,000 rows this import took about 15 seconds. You can verify that the data loaded correctly by checking your django admin.

Basic Python Logging in Django 1.2: Debugging Made Simple

March 2nd, 2011 · MTF · Uncategorized 15 comments - Tags: django, python

When I was deploying my new social shopping site Wantbox a couple of month ago, I discovered that I couldn’t use the Django print command in my live Dreamhost (Passenger WSGI) environment like this:

   print "Hello world!"

As a new site, I was still debugging a few persistent nits and really needed to print out messages when certain areas of the code were accessed. A few sites recommended that I try the Django debug toolbar, but I was having trouble getting that to work reliably in my Dreamhost setup.

I searched around a bit more and after consuming many web pages, finally discovered a dead simple solution using the built-in Python logging module.