I am currently working on a bigger article for Medium but until I can put it words so that it’s really something really worth sharing, just wanted to add on one of the steps that I learned while working.
Normally I wanted to load some info that was stored in CSV to BigQuery for analysis and filtering.
I though that you can just add the header to CSV file and it will automatically recognize it and load it.
Turns out that it’s a little bit more complicated.
Normally it should work, and since it did with my first CSV, couldn’t really understand what was wrong.
Now, there are two parts to this story:
How can you add the Table schema manually, and it will reveal the actual issue.
What do you need to be aware of and why this happens
How can you add the table schema manually
The data that is written to CSV is actually a Dataframe, so you have info about the types of the columns directly from code
dtype_mapping = {
'object': 'STRING',
'int64': 'FLOAT',
'float64': 'FLOAT'
}
schema = []
for column, dtype in df.dtypes.items():
schema.append({
'name': column,
'type': dtype_mapping.get(str(dtype), 'STRING') # Default to STRING if type is not in map
})
import json
print(json.dumps(schema, indent=2))
Yes, I know, int64 should be mapped to INTEGER, but it turns out that for my case some columns even if in Python are market as int64, in BigQuery they need to be FLOAT. I know there is more memory allocated but the dataset is quite small.
So you can easily use so that you can exclude the header.
df.to_csv(f"df.csv", index=False, mode='a')
The above piece of code will help you create a SCHEMA from a Dataframe header
What do you need to be aware of and why this happens
The actually reason why this happened is because I was not aware that somewhere in my csv file a line with the header definition still remained (yes, I actually wrote multiple dataframes with header and filtered with a Linux command, and it did not work)
And when the file loaded, I actually saw this:
Normally if that line was missing and no header, that it should had looked like
Things to be learned from this exercise:
If you have to write multiple dataframes in a CSV file, don’t add the header and use the above code to generate a specific definition of the schema
Properly check the CSV not to have rogue lines that don’t match the rest of the structure of the data, otherwise you will find out that everything is converted to string and you don’t understand why.
I queried, some time ago, trace route info for IP’s in a list and took the wrong decision to save it in the following form.
At first sight it’s not really an issue but if you want to retrieve it and create a dataframe it will look not as expected.
Here is the actual code to separate the payload column to column defined by keys in dictionary
import pandas as pd
# Assuming 'df' is your DataFrame and 'payload' is the column containing dictionaries
df_expanded = pd.json_normalize(trace_rt_df['payload'])
# Rename columns to match original keys (optional)
df_expanded.columns = df_expanded.columns.map(lambda x: x.split('.')[-1])
# Concatenate the expanded columns with the original DataFrame
df_final = pd.concat([trace_rt_df, df_expanded], axis=1)
# Drop the original 'payload' column (optional)
df_final.drop('payload', axis=1, inplace=True)
To make a long story short, if you want to plot the count for each individual column and capture the unique values of a particular column inside that dataframe, you can simply achieve it by using the following command:
We will select the first 10 countries in the series since the actual number of unique countries in the dataset is actually 118.
And the plot looks like this.
I wanted to document it because it’s an operation that I have done before, and the actual feedback from the chatbot when asked what is the solution was quite a bit more complex.
First of all it consisted of the code to filter the values and save the definition of the bar plot to a JSON file, using vega-altair library (subject for exploration at one moment in time – https://altair-viz.github.io/) and parsing the data to create the plot.
The first part worked without any issues, with the following piece of code:
import altair as alt
import pandas as pd
# Assuming df is your DataFrame (from the previous example)
# 1. Filter to column 'Country' and calculate unique value counts
value_counts = mycategory['Country'].value_counts()
# 2. Convert to DataFrame for plotting
value_counts_df = pd.DataFrame({'Value': value_counts.index, 'Count': value_counts.values})
# 3. Create bar plot
chart = alt.Chart(value_counts_df).mark_bar().encode(
x=alt.X('Value:N', axis=alt.Axis(title='Value')),
y=alt.Y('Count:Q', axis=alt.Axis(title='Count')),
tooltip=['Value', 'Count']
).properties(
title='Value Counts for Column Country'
)
# Save the chart
chart.save('value_counts_column_a_bar_chart.json')
But the second part was a little bit tricky since the chatbot didn’t have a read idea of how the structure of the file was formed, suggesting:
import plotly.graph_objects as go
import json
# Load JSON data
with open('value_counts_column_a_bar_chart.json', 'r') as f:
chart_data = json.load(f)
# Extract data for plotting correctly, handling both nominal and quantitative data
if 'Column Name' in chart_data['datasets'][0]['data'][0]:
# Nominal data (e.g., categories like 'A', 'B', 'C')
x = [d['Column Name'] for d in chart_data['datasets'][0]['data']]
y = [d['Unique Value Count'] for d in chart_data['datasets'][0]['data']]
else:
# Quantitative data (e.g., numeric values)
x = [d['Value'] for d in chart_data['datasets'][0]['data']]
y = [d['Count'] for d in chart_data['datasets'][0]['data']]
# Create Plotly bar chart
fig = go.Figure([go.Bar(x=x, y=y)])
# Customize layout (optional)
fig.update_layout(
title='Value Counts for Column A',
xaxis_title='Value',
yaxis_title='Count'
)
# Show the chart
fig.show()
If you try to compile that it will return a KeyError:0 which is cause by the index of the chart_data[datasets][0] which is not correct.
Taking a look in the actual JSON structure you quickly find that the right key is data-85d48ef46f547bd16ab0f88b32c209fb, which bring us to the correct version:
import plotly.graph_objects as go
import json
# Load JSON data
with open('value_counts_column_a_bar_chart.json', 'r') as f:
chart_data = json.load(f)
# Extract data for plotting correctly, handling both nominal and quantitative data
if 'Column Name' in chart_data['datasets']['data-85d48ef46f547bd16ab0f88b32c209fb']:
# Nominal data (e.g., categories like 'A', 'B', 'C')
x = [d['Column Name'] for d in chart_data['datasets']['data-85d48ef46f547bd16ab0f88b32c209fb']]
y = [d['Unique Value Count'] for d in chart_data['datasets']['data-85d48ef46f547bd16ab0f88b32c209fb']]
else:
# Quantitative data (e.g., numeric values)
x = [d['Value'] for d in chart_data['datasets']['data-85d48ef46f547bd16ab0f88b32c209fb']]
y = [d['Count'] for d in chart_data['datasets']['data-85d48ef46f547bd16ab0f88b32c209fb']]
# Create Plotly bar chart
fig = go.Figure([go.Bar(x=x, y=y)])
# Customize layout (optional)
fig.update_layout(
title='Value Counts for Country',
xaxis_title='Value',
yaxis_title='Count'
)
# Show the chart
fig.show()
Or even a more elegant one suggested by the LLM:
mport plotly.graph_objects as go
import json
# Load JSON data
with open('value_counts_column_a_bar_chart.json', 'r') as f:
chart_data = json.load(f)
# Find the correct data key within 'datasets'
data_key = list(chart_data['datasets'].keys())[0]
# Extract data for plotting correctly, handling both nominal and quantitative data
if 'Column Name' in chart_data['datasets'][data_key][0]:
# Nominal data (e.g., categories like 'A', 'B', 'C')
x = [d['Column Name'] for d in chart_data['datasets'][data_key][:10]]
y = [d['Unique Value Count'] for d in chart_data['datasets'][data_key][:10]]
else:
# Quantitative data (e.g., numeric values)
x = [d['Value'] for d in chart_data['datasets'][data_key][:10]]
y = [d['Count'] for d in chart_data['datasets'][data_key][:10]]
# Create Plotly bar chart
fig = go.Figure([go.Bar(x=x, y=y)])
# Customize layout (optional)
fig.update_layout(
title='Value Counts for Country',
xaxis_title='Value',
yaxis_title='Count'
)
# Show the chart
fig.show()
Somewhere in the code is also a trim of the first 10 values in order to have similar outcomes. But the final plot looks like it should.
And that my friends is a small “pill” of working with Data Analysis, assisted by a LLM.
Some time ago, I tried to write some python code in order to grab each unique IP from my traffic logs and trying to trace it so that We can find similar nodes which were used for the jumps.
This is also a good exercise in order to improve the basic dataframe information and a good baseline for some explorations.
I will put here the code so that it is available for me as reference and also maybe for you if you want to take pieces of it.
I know that it is not optimised, but you can modify it or maybe use a chatbot to improve it.
import pymongo
import scapy.all as scapy
myclient = pymongo.MongoClient("mongodb://localhost:27017/")
db = myclient["mydatabase"]
read_col = db["unique_ip"]
write_col = db["unique_ip_trace_tcp"]
lastid = 0
index_last_ip = write_col.find().sort([('_id', -1)]).limit(1)
for doc in index_last_ip:
doc['source_ip']
index_id = read_col.find({"payload":doc['source_ip']})
for elem in index_id:
lastid=elem['id']
print(lastid)
for i in range(lastid, read_col.count_documents({})):
mydoc = read_col.find({ "id": i })
for x in mydoc:
try:
for element in x['payload']:
response = {}
ans, unans = scapy.traceroute(element)
response['source_ip'] = element
payload = {}
for sdr,rcv in ans:
payload[str(sdr.ttl)]= rcv.src
response['payload'] = payload
write_col.insert_one(response)
except Exception as e:
print(e)
continue
I am putting this here more as a reference since this error appeared a couple of time when using urllib library.
For example there is the classical case of
from urllib.request import urlopen
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
html = urlopen('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Bacon')
bs = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')
for link in bs.find_all('a'):
if 'href' in link.attrs:
print(link.attrs['href'])
And if you run it for the first time in your Jupyter Kernel, it will return
URLError: <urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:997)>
The easiest way to fix it is by adding two extra lines to the code
from urllib.request import urlopen
import ssl
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
ssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context
html = urlopen('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Bacon')
bs = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')
for link in bs.find_all('a'):
if 'href' in link.attrs:
print(link.attrs['href'])
The first one is to import the ssl library and the second one to actually create an unverified context.
The interesting fact is that once this is loaded to the kernel, it will actually work even if you comment the lines and re-execute it.
I wanted for Gemini to take a look on the code that I posted here
Here is his answer:
Absolutely! Here’s a breakdown of improvements and considerations for refining the provided web scraping code:
Enhancements:
Robust Error Handling: Incorporate try-except blocks around the scraping logic and network calls. This will prevent the script from crashing due to unexpected issues like elements not being found or the website being temporarily down.
Optimized Waits: Replace the fixed time.sleep(2) with more precise WebDriverWait conditions. For instance, wait for specific elements that indicate successful loading. This improves efficiency.
Reusable Function: Convert the alcopascrap function to accept additional parameters (like wait times) for greater flexibility in various scraping scenarios.
Data Cleaning: Within the loop, sanitize the extracted data, removing unnecessary whitespace or non-standard characters to ensure data consistency.
Comments: Add clear comments to explain the purpose of different code sections, which is crucial for understanding and maintenance.
Optimization Considerations
Scrolling Logic: Investigate if the website uses infinite scroll or lazy loading. If it does, adjust the scrolling logic to trigger loading of new content only when necessary.
Parallelism (Advanced): Consider parallelizing requests for different brands using threading or multiprocessing, especially if the scraping scope is large.
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException, NoSuchElementException
import time
def alcopascrap(brand, max_wait_time=10):
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
try:
driver.get(f"https://www.alcopa-auction.fr/ro/cautare?brand={brand}")
WebDriverWait(driver, max_wait_time).until(
EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, "CybotCookiebotDialogBodyButtonAccept"))
).click()
# Optimized scrolling (Implementation depends on the site's scrolling mechanism)
list_of_cars = []
ratings = soup.find_all('div',{'data-brand':brand})
for rating in ratings:
data = {}
try:
data['title'] = rating.find('li',{'class':'mb-2 list-group-item border-0 p-0'}).get_text().strip()
data['price'] = rating['data-prices']
data['details'] = [element.get_text().strip() for element in rating.find_all('li', {'class':'list-group-item border-0 p-0'})]
data['link'] = rating.find('a', {'class':'no-decoration'}).get('href')
list_of_cars.append(data)
except NoSuchElementException:
print(f"Error processing car data in rating block: {rating}")
# ... (rest of your code)
except TimeoutException:
print(f"Timeout waiting for elements on page for brand: {brand}")
finally:
driver.quit()
alcopascrap('nissan')
Just for reference a small example of scrapping https://www.alcopa-auction.fr/ for new cars on specific brand.
It can be improved a lot but just as a reference of the code.
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium import webdriver
import time
# Set up a headless browser
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
# Load the website with JavaScript
def alcopascrap(brand):
driver.get(f"https://www.alcopa-auction.fr/ro/cautare?brand={brand}")
# Wait for JavaScript to execute (adjust wait time if needed)
driver.implicitly_wait(180)
WebDriverWait(driver, 1).until(
EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, "CybotCookiebotDialogBodyButtonAccept"))
).click()
# Get initial scroll height
last_height = driver.execute_script("return document.body.scrollHeight")
while True:
# Scroll down
driver.execute_script("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);")
# Wait for loading
time.sleep(2) # Adjust wait time as needed
# Calculate new scroll height and compare with previous
new_height = driver.execute_script("return document.body.scrollHeight")
if new_height == last_height:
break
last_height = new_height
# Get the HTML source with JavaScript modifications
html_source = driver.page_source
# Parse the HTML with BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(html_source, 'html.parser')
#Create a list to store the data
list_of_cars = []
# Now you can use BeautifulSoup to extract the data you need
# ...
ratings = soup.find_all('div',{'data-brand':brand})
for rating in ratings:
data = {}
data['title'] = rating.find('li',{'class':'mb-2 list-group-item border-0 p-0'}).get_text()
data['price'] = rating['data-prices']
data['details'] = [ element.get_text().strip() for element in rating.find_all('li',{'class':'list-group-item border-0 p-0'})]
data['link'] = rating.find('a', {'class':'no-decoration'}).get('href')
list_of_cars.append(data)
# Print the data
for car in list_of_cars:
print(car, end='\n')
# Close browser
driver.quit()
alcopascrap('nissan')
As for the code description, here is the one from Github Copilot, you judge if it’s good or not.
This Python script uses Selenium and BeautifulSoup to scrape car data from the Alcopa Auction website. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown:
Import necessary libraries: BeautifulSoup for parsing HTML, Selenium for browser automation, and time for controlling the script’s timing.
Set up a headless browser using Selenium’s webdriver. This script uses Chrome as the browser.
Define a function alcopascrap(brand), which takes a car brand as an argument and scrapes data for that brand from the website.
The function first navigates to the Alcopa Auction website’s search page for the specified brand.
It waits for the page to load, then clicks the accept button on the cookie consent dialog.
It then enters a loop where it continually scrolls to the bottom of the page, waits for more content to load, and repeats until no more new content is loaded. This is done to ensure all the dynamic content loaded by JavaScript is captured.
After all content is loaded, it gets the page’s HTML source.
It then parses the HTML using BeautifulSoup.
It creates an empty list list_of_cars to store the car data.
It finds all div elements with a data-brand attribute matching the specified brand. For each of these elements, it extracts the car title, price, details, and link, and stores them in a dictionary. Each dictionary is then appended to list_of_cars.
It prints out the data for each car.
Finally, it closes the browser.
The function is then called with ‘nissan’ as the argument, so it scrapes data for Nissan cars.
This script is a good example of how to use Selenium and BeautifulSoup together to scrape data from a website that uses JavaScript to load content.