Creating a .txt file in Python, but I cannot find where it is saved

Question

I'm learning how to use Python and SublimeText to pull financial data from Yahoo. After watching a tutorial video I came up with this code to get the 1 year range of data from Yahoo for AAPL.

import urllib2
import time

stockToPull = 'AAPL' 

def pullData(stock):

    try:
        fileLine = stock+'.txt'
        urlToVisit = 'http://chartapi.finance.yahoo.com/instrument/1.0/'+stock+'/chartdata;type=quote;range=1y/csv'
        sourceCode = urllib2.urlopen(urlToVisit).read()
        splitSource = sourceCode.split('\n')

        for eachLine in splitSource:
            splitLine = eachLine
            if len(splitLine) == 6:
                if 'value' not in eachLine:
                    saveFile = open(fileLine,'a')
                    lineToWrite = eachLine+'\n'
                    saveFile.write(lineToWrite)

        print 'Pulled',stock
        print 'sleeping'
        time.sleep(5)

    except Exception,e:print 'main loop', str(e)

pullData(stockToPull)

I cannot seem the find the 'AAPL.txt' file the code was supposed to create, so I am assuming the file was never created in the first place.

The code executes correctly, but no file.

Suggestions?

Answer 1

Python's open is, underneath the covers, C's fopen, which is relative to the current working directory: your current directory when you ran the program.

To illustrate you might try:

echo "open('touched.file','w').close()" >/tmp/touch.py

and then then cd to wherever you want and run python /tmp/touch.py and see that touched.file is created... if you have permissions to do so.

My guess is that there's some kind of permissions problem with your working directory.

Answer 2

I guess it is never true that len(splitLine) == 6. You don't have any command to split the line, the splitLine variable points to the same thing as the eachLine variable. So len(splitLine) will give you the number of characters in the line, rather than the number of elements in a list (assuming that that is what splitLine is meant to be).

Two things to try:

• Add a print function print len(splitLine) to see how long your script thinks the lines are. If the length is never 6 then the script never writes anything.

• Try writing something to your file (e.g. a header) outside the if condition.

Answer 3

try:

import os
print os.getcwd()

somewhere in your code. That will print your current working directory, which you can then navigate to using a file browser. This will depend on where you are running your script from.

You should also try opening the files as:

with open(filename, 'r') as f:
    # conditional to determine what data to write
    f.write(data)

This will auto-close the file when you exit that indentation scope.