Convert a binary number to human readable text

Question

I am using Python 3.3.

I get my data from a serial port and each byte I get correspond to one whole number. (no number is greater than 255, so no multi-byte numbers).

I have been trying way to long getting this written to a text file in human readable text so I am asking for help.

If I get value 0b10000111 from my serial port, how do I get this number to show up as "135" in my text file? This sounds like a simple task, but I have struggled a lot!

I also want to add a comma to separate the value (bytes).

This is what I have been trying:

import sys
import serial

port = serial.Serial('COM4', 115200)
fileID = open('output.txt', 'a')

while(1):
    data = port.read(size=1)
    if data != 0:
        #MISSING SOME CONVERSION HERE... Tried a lot of things, 
        #but none have been correct.
        fileID.write(data)
        fileID.write(',')

Answer 1

You know that the size of data is one, and all you're interested in is the first byte. First you need to convert that byte to an integer, then to a string.

fileID.write(str(ord(data[0])))

Answer 2

It is now working and I wanted to share the code with the rest of you awesome people:

import sys
import serial

port = serial.Serial('COM4', 115200, timeout=0)
data = b''

while(1):
    data = port.read()
    print(data)
    if data != b'':
        fileID = open('output.txt', 'a')
        fileID.write(str(ord(data)))
        fileID.write(',')
        fileID.close()

port.close()