How to export MS Access table into a csv file in Python using e.g. pypyodbc

Question

I have been trying to export a table from MS Access database into a csv file using pypydobc - using fetchone function is taking forever e.g. 200,000 rows are taking about 5 minutes to print. If fetchone was quicker I could have just printed the results into a csv file but it's taking too long. This is what I tried so far:

import pypyodbc
pypyodbc.lowercase = False
conn = pypyodbc.connect(
    r"Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};" +
    r"Dbq=C:\temp\Temp_DB.accdb;")
cur = conn.cursor()
cur.execute("SELECT Column1, Column2, FROM Table1");
Col1 = []
Col2 = []
row = cur.fetchone()
while  row is not None:
    print(row)
    row = cur.fetchone()
    Col1.append(row.get("Column1"))
    Col2.append(row.get("Column2"))
cur.close()
conn.close()

Also, is there a documentation on all functions in pypyodbc which I have failed to find so far?

Answer 1

Consider using cur.fetchall() and the csv module to directly output query results without needing to append to individual lists (and consider refraining from print to save process time):

import pypyodbc
import csv

# MS ACCESS DB CONNECTION
pypyodbc.lowercase = False
conn = pypyodbc.connect(
    r"Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};" +
    r"Dbq=C:\temp\Temp_DB.accdb;")

# OPEN CURSOR AND EXECUTE SQL
cur = conn.cursor()
cur.execute("SELECT Column1, Column2, FROM Table1");

# OPEN CSV AND ITERATE THROUGH RESULTS
with open('Output.csv', 'w', newline='') as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)    
    for row in cur.fetchall() :
        writer.writerow(row)

cur.close()
conn.close()

---

Aside - above you are connecting to the Jet/ACE SQL Engine (an object of the MSAccess.exe and not restricted to the program but available to all Office/Windows programs -the misnomer to think MS Access is a database but is actually a GUI console to one. Alternatively for your csv export, you can interact with the GUI application and run Access' TransferText() method to export tables/queries to text delimited files. And Python can open the database and call the export method with win32com module:

import win32com.client

# OPEN ACCESS APP AND DATABASE
oApp = win32com.client.Dispatch("Access.Application")
oApp.OpenCurrentDatabase('C:\temp\Temp_DB.accdb')

# EXPORT TABLE TO CSV
acExportDelim = 2
oApp.DoCmd.TransferText(acExportDelim, None, "Table1", 'Output.csv'), True)

oApp.DoCmd.CloseDatabase
oApp.Quit
oApp = None