dbfread 1.1.1

Example

>>> import dbfread
>>> for record in dbfread.open('people.dbf'):
...     print(record)
{'NAME': 'Alice', 'BIRTHDATE': datetime.date(1987, 3, 1)}
{'NAME': 'Bob', 'BIRTHDATE': datetime.date(1980, 11, 12)}

This reads records from the file one by one. If you pass load=True they are instead loaded into a list:

>>> table = dbfread.open('people.dbf', load=True)
>>> table.records[0]
{'NAME': 'Alice', 'BIRTHDATE': datetime.date(1987, 3, 1)}

You can use the table.load() and table.unload() to switch between the two states. len(table) will give you the number of records in the file. If records are not loaded this will scan the file.

Deleted records are available in the deleted attribute and behave just like normal records.

dbfread.open() is just an alias for the DBF object, so if you prefer you can do this instead:

>>> from dbfread import DBF
>>> table = DBF('people.dbf')

Status

The library has been used to read Visual FoxPro files with a wide range of data types, but is not widely tested with other DBF formats. It should still work for most files.

.FPT memo files are fully supported. The alternative .DBT memo files will be supported if I find any examples to test with.

I intend for dbfread to be able to read any DBF file. If you have a file it can’t read, or you find a bug, I’d love to hear from you.

Requirements and Installing

dbfread is a pure Python module written for Python 3.2 and 2.7.

pip install dbfread

Supported Field Types

Keyword Arguments to open() / DBF()

load=False

By default records and deleted records will be read off disk one by one. If you pass True all records will be loaded into memory and the DBF object will behave like a list. Deleted records will be available as a list in the deleted attribute.

encoding=None

Specify character encoding to use.

By default dbfread will try to guess character encoding from the language_driver byte. If this fails it falls back on "ascii".

lowernames=False

Field names are typically uppercase. If you pass True all field names will be converted to lowercase.

recfactory=dict

Takes a function that will be used to produce new records. The function should take a list of (name, value) tuples. For example if you want to preserve the order of fields you can pass recfactory=collections.OrderedDict.

ignorecase=True

Windows uses a case preserving file system which means people.dbf and PEOPLE.DBF are the same file. This causes problems in for example Linux where case is significant. To get around this dbfread ignores case in file names. You can turn this off by passing ignorecase=False.

parserclass=FieldParser

The parser to use when parsing field values. You can use this to add new field types or do custom parsing by subclassing dbfread.field_parser.FieldParser. (See examples/parserclass.py and examples/parserclass_debugstring.py.

raw=False

Returns all data values as byte strings. This can be used for debugging or for doing your own decoding.

All list methods are also available when records are loaded.

DBF Object Attributes

records

If the table is loaded this is a list of records. If not, it’s a RecordIterator object. In either case, iterating over it or calling len() on it will give the same results.

deleted

If the table is loaded this is a list of deleted records. If not, it’s a RecordIterator object. In either case, iterating over it or calling len() on it will give the same results.

loaded

True if records are loaded into memory.

dbversion

The name of the program that created the database (based on the dbversion byte in the header). Example: "FoxBASE+/Dbase III plus, no memory".

name

Name of the table. This is the lowercased stem of the filename, for example the file /home/me/SHOES.dbf will have the name shoes.

date

Date when the file was last updated (as datetime.date).

field_names

A list of field names in the order they appear in the file. This can for example be used to produce the header line in a CSV file.

encoding

Character encoding used in the file. This is determined by the language_driver byte in the header, and can be overriden with the encoding keyword argument.

ignorecase, lowernames, recfactory, parserclass, raw

These correspond to the keyword arguments below.

filename

File name of the DBF file.

memofilename

File name of the memo file, or None if there is no memo file.

header

The file header. Example:

DBFHeader(dbversion=48, year=12, month=7, day=11, numrecords=555,
headerlen=2408, recordlen=632, reserved1=0, incomplete_transaction=0,
encryption_flag=0, free_record_thread=0, reserved2=0, reserved3=0,
mdx_flag=3, language_driver=3, reserved4=0)

fields

A list of field headers from the file. Example:

[DBFField(name=u'NAME', type=u'C', address=1, length=25, decimal_count=0,
reserved1=0, workarea_id=0, reserved2=0, reserved3=0, set_fields_flag=0,
reserved4='\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00', index_field_flag=0),
... etc. ...]

DBF Object Methods

load()

Load records into memory. This loads both records and deleted records.

unload()

Unload records from memory.

Importing data with Dataset or dbf2sqlite

Using dataset it’s easy to move your data into a more modern database. See examples/using_dataset.py.

Alternatively you can use the included program examples/dbf2sqlite:

dbf2sqlite -o example.sqlite table1.dbf table2.dbf

This will create one table for each DBF file. You can also omit the -o example.sqlite option to have the SQL printed directly to stdout.

If you get character encoding errors you can pass --encoding to override the encoding, for example:

dbf2sqlite --encoding=latin1 ...

Developing

All development happens in the develop branch. The master branch is only for releases.

To have tests run automatically when you commit you can install a pre-commit hook:

ln -s ../../run_tests.py .git/hooks/pre-commit

If any of the tests fail the commit will be canceled.

Caveats

• since 1.1.0 the DBF object is no longer a subclass of list. Records are instead available in the records attribute, but the table can be iterated over like before. This change was made to make the API cleaner and easier to understand. read() is still included for backwards compatability, and returns an DeprecatedDBF object with the old behaviour.

• there is currently no way to ignore missing memo files.

License

dbfread is released under the terms of the MIT license.

Source code

Latest stable release: http://github.com/olemb/dbfread/

Development version: http://github.com/olemb/dbfread/tree/develop/

Contact

Ole Martin Bjorndalen - ombdalen@gmail.com