Often, I find myself writing a script or application where I want to do some quick data extraction and analysis using a database, but where it’d be overkill to set up a MySQL schema to store the data. So, enter my recently-beloved Python and the sqlite3 module.
SQLite has the advantage of storing data in a single flat file – which is fine if you’re creating something to be used locally, and by a single user. Plus, if you’re using Python 2.5 or above, pysqlite2 comes pre-bundled, so all you need to do is:
from sqlite3 import *
Then it’s just a case of creating your tables, popping in some data, and performing some queries. Simples. Firstly, create a connection object and a cursor to go with it:
connection = connect('data.db') cursor = connection.cursor()
Then it’s just a case of creating some tables…
cursor.execute("CREATE TABLE person (id int primary key, firstname text, lastname text)")
Putting some data in them…
cursor.execute("INSERT INTO person VALUES (null, 'Joe', 'Bloggs')") connection.commit()
…and querying it!
cursor.execute('SELECT * FROM person') for row in cursor: print row
Anyway – that’s my first go at writing a quick and dirty tutorial, if you find it helpful or you think I’ve missed anything out then leave me a comment.
pyradiodns
I was reminded this evening that I’ve been sitting on an early version of pyradiodns for a while, without really announcing it or doing anything with it. So this is that.
It’s a direct port of Andy Buckingham’s php-radiodns, so everything is named the same and all the methods have an identical ‘footprint’. All the technical details, along with a quick and dirty example, are available on the Google Code page. If you spot anything that looks wrong (no prizes), or you’d like to contribute to the project then let me know.
There was a fair deal of interest in RadioDNS at the recent Radio Academy event, although that may have been more to do with Matt’s iPad. If you’ve heard about it but you’re not really sure what it is, then you should definitely read this quick introduction.