Read specific columns with pandas or other python module

Question

I have a csv file from this webpage. I want to read some of the columns in the downloaded file (the csv version can be downloaded in the upper right corner).

Let\'s

Answer 1

According to the latest pandas documentation you can read a csv file selecting only the columns which you want to read.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('some_data.csv', usecols = ['col1','col2'], low_memory = False)

Here we use usecols which reads only selected columns in a dataframe.

We are using low_memory so that we Internally process the file in chunks.

Answer 2

An easy way to do this is using the pandas library like this.

import pandas as pd
fields = ['star_name', 'ra']

df = pd.read_csv('data.csv', skipinitialspace=True, usecols=fields)
# See the keys
print df.keys()
# See content in 'star_name'
print df.star_name

The problem here was the skipinitialspace which remove the spaces in the header. So ' star_name' becomes 'star_name'

Answer 3

Got a solution to above problem in a different way where in although i would read entire csv file, but would tweek the display part to show only the content which is desired.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('data.csv', skipinitialspace=True)
print df[['star_name', 'ra']]

This one could help in some of the scenario's in learning basics and filtering data on the basis of columns in dataframe.