Reduce number of if statements on python

Question

I have a txt file to parse that looks like:

--- What kind of submission is this? ---
Sold Property
--- State? ---
Los Angeles
...

and need to store values after --- --- tags in variables. It works with all those if statements, but I was wondering whether it is possible to refactor a huge number of ifs into some structure (eg dictionary), and then easily write that to output file.

Here's something I made:

"""Open a file to read"""
        for line in res:
            if "Instagram Usernames" in line:
                usernames = next(res)
            if "Date" in line:
                date = next(res)
            if "Address" in line:
                address = next(res)
            if "Neighborhood" in line:
                market = next(res)
            if "State" in line:
                city = next(res)
            if "Asset" in line:
                as_type = next(res)
            if "Sale Price" in line:
                price = next(res)
                if "," in price:
                    price = price.replace(',', '')
                if "$" in price:
                    price = price.replace('$', '')
            if "Square" in line:
                sf = next(res)
                if "," in sf:
                    sf = sf.replace(',', '')
                if "$" in sf:
                    sf = sf.replace('$', '')
            if "Buyer" in line:
                buyer = next(res)
            if "Seller" in line:
                seller = next(res)
            if "Broker" in line:
                brokers = next(res)
            if "Notes" in line:
                notes = next(res)

        """Write to output file"""
        fin.write("IMAGE:  @" + usernames)
        fin.write("DATE: " + date)
        fin.write("ADDRESS: " + address)
        fin.write("MARKET: " + market)
        fin.write("CITY: " + city)
        if as_type == "Multi Family" or "Multi Family\n":
            fin.write("ASSET TYPE: Multifamily\n")
        else:
            fin.write("ASSET TYPE: " + as_type)
        fin.write("PRICE: $" + price)
        if sf in bad_symb:
            fin.write("SF: N/A\n")
            fin.write("PPSF: N/A\n")
        else:
            fin.write("SF: " + sf)
            fin.write("PPSF: $" + "{0:.2f}\n".format(float(price) / float(sf)))
        fin.write("BUYER: " + buyer)
        fin.write("SELLER: " + seller)
        fin.write("BROKERS: " + brokers + "\n")
        if notes != "\n":
            fin.write("NOTES: " + notes + "\n")
        fin.write(footer_sale(market, buyer, seller))

Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance!

Answer 1

When I have a sequence of items like this, I like to set up a small data structure that specifies what I'm looking for, and if I find it where it should go.

def strip_currency(s):
    """Function to strip currency and commas from a real number string"""
    return s.replace('$', '').replace(',', '')

# mapping of data labels to attribute/key names
label_attr_map = (
    ('Instagram Usernames', 'usernames'),
    ('Date', 'date'),
    ('Address', 'address'),
    ('Neighborhood', 'market'),
    ('State', 'city'),            # <-- copy-paste bug?
    ('Asset', 'as_type'),
    ('Sale Price', 'price', strip_currency),
    ('Square', 'sf', strip_currency),
    ('Buyer', 'buyer'),
    ('Seller', 'seller'),
    ('Broker', 'broker'),
    ('Notes', 'notes'),
    )

# populate data dict with values from file, as defined in the label_attr_map
data = {}
for line in file:
    # find any matching label, or just go on to the next line
    match_spec = next((spec for spec in label_attr_map if spec[0] in line), None)
    if match_spec is None:
        continue

    # found a label, now extract the next line, and transform it if necessary
    key = match_spec[1]
    data[key] = next(file)
    if len(match_spec) > 2:
        transform_fn = match_spec[2]
        data[key] = transform_fn(data[key])

Now your label-to-attribute mapping is easier to verify, and your cascade of 'if's is just a single next expression.

To write the output, just access the different items in the data dict.

Answer 2

You could use a dictionary, with everything in-between the dashes being the key and the next line being the corresponding value.

As we are not using a loop, we first split the contents of the file into its lines:

res = res.split("\n")

The next line produces the dictionary; res[::2] chooses every second item in res , starting with the first item (all lines with --- ), res[1::2] every second item, starting with the second item (all lines with information).

Now we choose the lines with --- as the key for each entry in the dictionary and the information lines as the values: key: value ; as you probably don't want to include the dashes, we strip them and the space from the beginning and the end with .rstrip("- ") :

x = {key.rstrip("- "): value for key in res[::2] for value in res[1::2]}

Now you can easily index x to get the desired information, which will also simplify writing to your output file.

Answer 3

Use a lambda function defined for finding the next line string from the list of all line strings.

search_func = lambda search_str : [line_list[line_list.index(line)+1] for line in line_list[:-1] if search_str in line]

Get variables as keys and corresponding particular search strings as values in another dictionary :

all_vars_search_dict = {'usernames' : "Instagram Usernames" , 'date' : "Date", 'address' : "Address", 'market' : "Neightbourhood", 'city' : "State",...}

Now create another dictionary calling previous function to get the required values you're searching for :

all_vals = {k: search_func(all_vars_search_dict[k]) for k in all_vars_search_dict}

While writing to the output file, you can just iterate over this dictionary.

Note : This process can't be done for searching the keywords "Square" and "Sale Price" in the lines.