Have a list of dicts need to write csv file in python

Question

I need to ouput a list of dicts in python to a csv file. But I wanted to split them by filename. I have a list of dicts that looks like this:

{'Filename': 'F:\\Desktop\\Metadata\informationtechnologies1.pdf',
  'DESCRIPTION': [u'This is a test sentence.'],
  'NAME': [u'This is a test name'],
  'PERIOD': [],
  'INFO2': [u'TEST1',
   u'TEST2',
   u'TEST3',
   u'TEST4',
   u'TEST5',],
  'INFO': [u'TEST6',
   u'TEST7',
   u'TEST8',
   u'TEST9',
   u'TEST10',
   u'TEST11',]},
 {'Filename': 'F:\\Desktop\informationtechnologies.pdf',

I need to print these exactly how it appears in a single column, with the results being in a new row. Preferably a new line after each filename to separate all the results. For example:

Filename: informationtechnologies1.pdf DESCRIPTION: This is a sentence INFO2: TEST2 TEST3 TEST4 TEST5

Filename:informationtechnologies.pdf

I have tried the following code but it places it each list into single columns(one column can have a list of 20 pieces of data in the info columns):

df = DataFrame.from_dict(results)
df.to_csv("F:\Desktop/meta.csv",encoding='utf-8')

I need the data to be all iterated in column 1, so if there is a list within a dict I want each item in that list to print on a new line

Answer 1

What you show is not a csv file but a plain text file.

Assuming your requirements are:

• if a directory contains the key Filename print on first line the key, a colon, a space and the value
• for all other key, value items in the directory, first print a line with the key followed by a colon, then assuming the value is a list of unicode strings, print each value of the list encoded as utf8 on a line; if the value is not a list, convert it to unicode and print it encoded as utf8
• print an empty line after each directory

I would use explicit loops and tests, because I do not know any tool that does this out of the box:

with open("F:\\Desktop/meta.csv", "w") as fd:
    for d in results:
            if 'Filename' in d:
                dummy = fd.write('Filename: ' + d['Filename'] + '\n')
            for k, l in d.iteritems():
                if k != 'Filename':
                    dummy = fd.write(k + ':\n')
                    if isinstance(l, list):
                        for item in l:
                            dummy = fd.write(item.encode('utf8') + '\n')
                    else:
                        dummy = fd.write(unicode(l).encode('utf8') + '\n')
            dummy = fd.write('\n')