Python Automation#

Core Libraries Quick Reference#

TaskLibraryInstallationFile systempathlib, shutil, osstdlibCSVcsvstdlibExcelopenpyxl``pip install openpyxlExcel (old)xlrd / xlwt``pip install xlrd xlwtPDF textPyMuPDF (fitz)pip install PyMuPDFPDF tablescamelot-py / tabula-py``pip install camelot-pyWeb scrapingrequests + BeautifulSoup4``pip install requests beautifulsoup4Browser automationplaywright or selenium``pip install playwrightCLIargparse (stdlib) or clickstdlib / pip install clickRich terminalrich``pip install richFile watchingwatchdog``pip install watchdogSchedulingschedule or cronpip install schedule

Common Patterns#

1. Batch File Processing#

python

from pathlib import Path

for f in Path(".").glob("**/*.txt"):
    content = f.read_text()
    # transform content
    f.write_text(content)

2. CSV Read/Write#

python

import csv
with open("input.csv", newline="") as f:
    reader = csv.DictReader(f)
    for row in reader:
        print(row["column_name"])

with open("output.csv", "w", newline="") as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerow(["col1", "col2"])
    writer.writerow(["val1", "val2"])

3. Excel Generation#

python

from openpyxl import Workbook
wb = Workbook()
ws = wb.active
ws["A1"] = "Hello"
ws["B1"] = 42
wb.save("output.xlsx")

4. Web Scraping#

python

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

resp = requests.get("https://example.com", timeout=10)
soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text, "html.parser")
for link in soup.select("a[href]"):
    print(link["href"], link.text.strip())

Scripts#

See scripts/ for ready-to-use automation scripts:

• rename_batch.py — Batch rename files with pattern matching
• csv_to_excel.py — Convert CSV files to Excel workbooks

Reference Files#

• references/pandas.md — Advanced data analysis with pandas
• references/pdf.md — PDF extraction patterns