Save .dta files in python

Question

I'm wondering if anyone knows a Python package that allows you to save numpy arrays/recarrays in the .dta format of the statistical data analysis software Stata. This would really speed up a few steps in a system I have.

Answer 1

The scikits.statsmodels package includes a reader for Stata data files, which relies in part on PyDTA as pointed out by @Sven. In particular, genfromdta() will return an ndarray, e.g. from Python 2.7/statsmodels 0.3.1:

>>> import scikits.statsmodels.api as sm
>>> arr = sm.iolib.genfromdta('/Applications/Stata12/auto.dta')
>>> type(arr)
<type 'numpy.ndarray'>

The savetxt() function can be used in turn to save an array as a text file, which can be imported in Stata. For example, we can export the above as

>>> sm.iolib.savetxt('auto.txt', arr, fmt='%2s', delimiter=",")

and read it in Stata without a dictionary file as follows:

. insheet using auto.txt, clear

I believe a *.dta reader should be added in the near future.