Way to convert dbf to csv in python?

Question

I have a folder with a bunch of dbf files I would like to convert to csv. I have tried using a code to just change the extension from .dbf to .csv, and these files open fine when I use Excel, but when I open them in pandas they look like this:

                                                s\t�
0                                                NaN
1            1       176 1.58400000000e+005-3.385...

This is not what I want, and those characters don't appear in the real file.
How should I read in the dbf file correctly?

Answer 1

Here is my solution that I've been using for years. I have a solution for Python 2.7 and one for Python 3.5 (probably also 3.6).

Python 2.7:

import csv
from dbfpy import dbf

def dbf_to_csv(out_table):#Input a dbf, output a csv
    csv_fn = out_table[:-4]+ ".csv" #Set the table as .csv format
    with open(csv_fn,'wb') as csvfile: #Create a csv file and write contents from dbf
        in_db = dbf.Dbf(out_table)
        out_csv = csv.writer(csvfile)
        names = []
        for field in in_db.header.fields: #Write headers
            names.append(field.name)
        out_csv.writerow(names)
        for rec in in_db: #Write records
            out_csv.writerow(rec.fieldData)
        in_db.close()
    return csv_fn

Python 3.5:

import csv
from dbfread import DBF

def dbf_to_csv(dbf_table_pth):#Input a dbf, output a csv, same name, same path, except extension
    csv_fn = dbf_table_pth[:-4]+ ".csv" #Set the csv file name
    table = DBF(dbf_table_pth)# table variable is a DBF object
    with open(csv_fn, 'w', newline = '') as f:# create a csv file, fill it with dbf content
        writer = csv.writer(f)
        writer.writerow(table.field_names)# write the column name
        for record in table:# write the rows
            writer.writerow(list(record.values()))
    return csv_fn# return the csv name

You can get dbfpy and dbfread from pip install.

Answer 2

Using my dbf library you could do something like:

import sys
import dbf
for arg in sys.argv[1:]:
    dbf.export(arg)

which will create a .csv file of the same name as each dbf file. If you put that code into a script named dbf2csv.py you could then call it as

python dbf2csv.py dbfname dbf2name dbf3name ...