Read a text file, iterate over a list

Read a text file, iterate over a list#

Read a text file#

# Open a text file in reading mode ('r'):
with open('data/for_loop_haiku.txt', 'r') as f:  
    # f is a variable and holds the file object
    # Read the text file into a new variable called txt:
    txt = f.read()

# Now the data is available:
print(txt)

Iterate and count,
Loop through tasks with steady play,
End when done repeating.

from fpdf import FPDF

pdf = FPDF(format=(115, 180))

with open('data/for_loop_haiku.txt', 'r') as f: 

    txt = f.read()

pdf.add_page()
pdf.set_font('helvetica', size=24)
pdf.set_y(40)
pdf.multi_cell(w=0, h=10, text=txt, align='L')

pdf.output("pdfs/haiku.pdf")

haiku

Encoding#

When the text includes special characters like German Umlauts, then it’s sometimes necessary to specifiy the encoding of the text (commonly utf-8).

# Reading without encoding
with open('data/for_loop_haiku_german.txt', 'r', encoding='utf8') as f:
    txt = f.read()

print(txt)

Schleifen durch das Feld,
Zählend kreisen, bis's vollbracht,
Fortschritt Schritt für Schritt.

Read text as a list#

Now we’ll use written words as page numbers.

First we’ll get a list of written words and store them in the file wordlist.txt inside the folder data.

from fpdf import FPDF

pdf = FPDF(format=(115, 180))
pdf.set_font('Helvetica')

# Read the content of a textfile into the variable wordlist
with open('data/wordlist.txt', 'r') as f:
    wordlist = f.readlines()

# Iterate over all items of the list called wordlist
for word in wordlist:

    pdf.add_page()
    pdf.set_y(-24)
    pdf.set_font_size(10)

    # for each iteration, the next item of the list is 
    # stored in the variable called word
    pdf.cell(w=0, text=word, align='R')
    
pdf.output("pdfs/wordlist.pdf")

wordlist.gif

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