How do I create a CSV file from database in Python?

Question

I have a Sqlite 3 and/or MySQL table named \"clients\"..

Using python 2.6, How do I create a csv file named Clients100914.csv with headers? excel dialect...

Answer 1

import csv
import sqlite3

from glob import glob; from os.path import expanduser
conn = sqlite3.connect( # open "places.sqlite" from one of the Firefox profiles
    glob(expanduser('~/.mozilla/firefox/*/places.sqlite'))[0]
)
cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute("select * from moz_places;")
with open("out.csv", "w", newline='') as csv_file:  # Python 3 version    
#with open("out.csv", "wb") as csv_file:              # Python 2 version
    csv_writer = csv.writer(csv_file)
    csv_writer.writerow([i[0] for i in cursor.description]) # write headers
    csv_writer.writerows(cursor)

PEP 249 (DB API 2.0) has more information about cursor.description.

Answer 2

Using the csv module is very straight forward and made for this task.

import csv
writer = csv.writer(open("out.csv", 'w'))
writer.writerow(['name', 'address', 'phone', 'etc'])
writer.writerow(['bob', '2 main st', '703', 'yada'])
writer.writerow(['mary', '3 main st', '704', 'yada'])

Creates exactly the format you're expecting.