Reading Excel File using Python how do I get the values of a specific column with indicated column name

Question

I've an Excel File:

Arm_id      DSPName        DSPCode          HubCode          PinCode    PPTL
1            JaVAS            01              AGR             282001    1,2
2            JaVAS            01              AGR             282002    3,4
3            JaVAS            01              AGR             282003    5,6

I want to save a string in the form Arm_id,DSPCode,Pincode. This format is configurable, i.e. it might change to DSPCode,Arm_id,Pincode. I save it in a list like:

FORMAT = ['Arm_id', 'DSPName', 'Pincode']

How do I read the content of a specific column with provided name, given that the FORMAT is configurable?

This is what I tried. Currently I'm able to read all the content in the file

from xlrd import open_workbook
wb = open_workbook('sample.xls')
for s in wb.sheets():
    #print 'Sheet:',s.name
    values = []
    for row in range(s.nrows):
        col_value = []
        for col in range(s.ncols):
            value  = (s.cell(row,col).value)
            try : value = str(int(value))
            except : pass
            col_value.append(value)
        values.append(col_value)
print values

My output is :

[
    [u'Arm_id', u'DSPName', u'DSPCode', u'HubCode', u'PinCode', u'PPTL'],
    ['1', u'JaVAS', '1', u'AGR', '282001', u'1,2'], 
    ['2', u'JaVAS', '1', u'AGR', '282002', u'3,4'], 
    ['3', u'JaVAS', '1', u'AGR', '282003', u'5,6']
]

Then I loop around values[0] trying to find out the FORMAT content in values[0] and then getting the index of Arm_id, DSPname and Pincode in the values[0] and then from next loop I know the index of all the FORMAT factors , thereby getting to know which value do I need to get .

But this is such a poor solution.

Answer 1

So the key parts are to grab the header ( col_names = s.row(0) ) and when iterating through the rows, to skip the first row which isn't needed for row in range(1, s.nrows) - done by using range from 1 onwards (not the implicit 0). You then use zip to step through the rows holding 'name' as the header of the column.