how to format excel file using python?

Question

I have a script that scrapes data from list of websites using beautifulSoup package and save in an excel file using pandas and xlsxwriter packages.

What i want is to be able to format the excel file as i need like the width of the columns

but when i run the script it crash and display the below error.

AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'write'

code:

import pandas as pd

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import xlsxwriter

def scrap_website():
    url_list = ["https://www.bayt.com/en/international/jobs/executive-chef-jobs/",
    "https://www.bayt.com/en/international/jobs/head-chef-jobs/",
    "https://www.bayt.com/en/international/jobs/executive-sous-chef-jobs/"]
    
    joineddd = []
    for url in url_list:
        soup = BeautifulSoup(requests.get(url).content,"lxml")
        links = []
        for a in soup.select("h2.m0.t-regular a"):
            if a['href'] not in links:
                links.append("https://www.bayt.com"+ a['href'])
        
        for link in links:
            s = BeautifulSoup(requests.get(link).content, "lxml") 
            ### update Start ###
            alldd = dict()
            alldd['link'] = link
            dd_div = [i for i in s.select("div[class='card-content is-spaced'] div") 
                    if ('<dd>' in str(i) ) and ( "<dt>" in str(i))]

            for div in dd_div:
                k = div.select_one('dt').get_text(';', True)
                v = div.select_one('dd').get_text(';', True)
                alldd[k] = v
            ### update End  ###    
            joineddd.append(alldd)


# result
        df = pd.DataFrame(joineddd)
        df_to_excel = df.to_excel(r"F:\\AIenv\web_scrapping\\jobDesc.xlsx", index = False, header=True)
        workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook(df_to_excel)
        worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()
        worksheet.set_column(0, 0,50)
        workbook.close()

    

where is the error and how to fix it?

Answer 1

1. to_excel function returns nothing. It's why you got the error message.

# save excel file
excel_file_name = r"jobDesc.xlsx"
df.to_excel(excel_file_name, index = False, header=True)

# open excel file for change col width or something
workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook(excel_file_name)

2. Basically, you can't change existing file with xlsxwriter . There is a way to do so, but it is not recommended. I recommend openpyxl package instead of this. FYI, xlsxwriter: is there a way to open an existing worksheet in my workbook?

Answer 2

To access and format the Excel workbook or worksheet created by to_excel() you need to create an ExcelWriter object first. Something like this:

import pandas as pd


# Create a Pandas dataframe from some data.
df = pd.DataFrame({'Data': [10, 20, 30, 20, 15, 30, 45]})

# Create a Pandas Excel writer using XlsxWriter as the engine.
writer = pd.ExcelWriter('pandas_simple.xlsx', engine='xlsxwriter')

# Convert the dataframe to an XlsxWriter Excel object.
df.to_excel(writer, sheet_name='Sheet1', index=False, header=True)

# Get the xlsxwriter objects from the dataframe writer object.
workbook  = writer.book
worksheet = writer.sheets['Sheet1']

# Set the column width.
worksheet.set_column(0, 0, 50)

# Close the Pandas Excel writer and output the Excel file.
writer.save()

Output:

See Working with Python Pandas and XlsxWriter for more details.