Python Automation
Core Libraries Quick Reference
| Task | Library | Installation |
|---|---|---|
| File system | pathlib, shutil, os |
stdlib |
| CSV | csv |
stdlib |
| Excel | openpyxl |
pip install openpyxl |
| Excel (old) | xlrd / xlwt |
pip install xlrd xlwt |
| PDF text | PyMuPDF (fitz) |
pip install PyMuPDF |
| PDF tables | camelot-py / tabula-py |
pip install camelot-py |
| Web scraping | requests + BeautifulSoup4 |
pip install requests beautifulsoup4 |
| Browser automation | playwright or selenium |
pip install playwright |
| CLI | argparse (stdlib) or click |
stdlib / pip install click |
| Rich terminal | rich |
pip install rich |
| File watching | watchdog |
pip install watchdog |
| Scheduling | schedule or cron |
pip install schedule |
Common Patterns
1. Batch File Processing
from pathlib import Path
for f in Path(".").glob("**/*.txt"):
content = f.read_text()
# transform content
f.write_text(content)
2. CSV Read/Write
import csv
with open("input.csv", newline="") as f:
reader = csv.DictReader(f)
for row in reader:
print(row["column_name"])
with open("output.csv", "w", newline="") as f:
writer = csv.writer(f)
writer.writerow(["col1", "col2"])
writer.writerow(["val1", "val2"])
3. Excel Generation
from openpyxl import Workbook
wb = Workbook()
ws = wb.active
ws["A1"] = "Hello"
ws["B1"] = 42
wb.save("output.xlsx")
4. Web Scraping
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
resp = requests.get("https://example.com", timeout=10)
soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text, "html.parser")
for link in soup.select("a[href]"):
print(link["href"], link.text.strip())
Scripts
See scripts/ for ready-to-use automation scripts:
rename_batch.py— Batch rename files with pattern matchingcsv_to_excel.py— Convert CSV files to Excel workbooks
Reference Files
- references/pandas.md — Advanced data analysis with pandas
- references/pdf.md — PDF extraction patterns