How to convert, sort and save to CSV MS Access database .mdb file in Python

Question

I tried researching the answer but was not able to find a good solution. I have files with strange extensions .res. I was told that they are MS Access files. Not sure if they are the same as .mdb but I was able to open them in MS Access. How can I open those files, extract necessary data, sort that data and produce .csv file? I tried using this script: http://mazamascience.com/WorkingWithData/?p=168 and mdb tools on Linux. I got some output with errors in terminal but all the files produced were blank. It could be due to encoding. I am not sure. The file is in ASCII encoding I think.

Error: Table fo_Table
Smart_Battery_Data_Table
MCell_Aci_Data_Table
Aux_Global_Data_Table
Smart_Battery_Clock_Stretch_Table
 does not exist in this database.

On Windows I have no idea how to do it. My first step for now is just to dump the necessary table from that database file into .csv. But ideally I need the script to take the file, sort it, extract necessary data, do some calculations (like data in one column divided by data in another column) and save all that stuff into nice .csv. Thanks a lot. I am not an experienced programmer so please have mercy.

Answer 1

Using the generic pyodbc library should do it. Looks like it has already an embedded MS access driver. This question can probably help you out.

I dont have any MS Access database files with me (It has been ages that I dont have to work with them), but following the examples your code should be something like this:

import pyodbc

db_file = r'''/path/to/the/file.res'''
user = 'admin'
password = 'password'
odbc_conn_str = 'DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=%s;UID=%s;PWD=%s' % (db_file, user, password)

conn = pyodbc.connect(odbc_conn_str)

cursor = conn.cursor()

cursor.execute("select * from table order by some_column")

for row in cursor.fetchall():
    print ", ".join((row.column1, row.column2, row.columnN))