Words: 653
Time to read: ~ 3 minutes.
Same Trap, Different Language
I’ve been trying to improve my knowledge of Python for the past while. I’ve fallen into the same trap that I fell into when I started my DBA learnings though.
When I began my DBA learning, I was a Blog Post Warrior.
I read every blog post and DBA StackExchange post I could find. I had RSS feeds and alerts all set up and firing. I still have these RSS feeds and alerts though. There was nothing wrong with them, the problem was with the way I was using them. That was the extent of my learning. It was all theory and no practice!
Me: Oh, that’s how you do a page restore. Good to know.
Me and Me
My Brain: Do you want to try that?
Me: No, I read how to do it so I know it now.
I hope I don’t have to point out how sub-optimal this is. I changed how I learned about DBA topics. I built a lab and starting doing some practical work alongside the theory.
Yes, it may mean a slow down in learning throughput but it also means that I only need to learn a topic once. By embracing the practical side, I’ve moulded the information into my brain. I’ve also learned more if I hit errors that aren’t in the blog posts and have to fix them.
Same with Python
I’ve set up RSS feeds. I’ve signed up to newsletters. I’m checking out questions online. But I was not practising.
That has to change now.
I have a dependency on PowerShell. I like it. I find it easier to think that way. So that is where I have to change. Anytime I find myself reaching for PowerShell and I have time in my deadline, I’ll try to do Python as well.
That’s where this blog post comes into play.
The Reason
We’re adding information to our internal wiki. We use TFS (Team Foundation Server) for this and TFS allows a variation of markdown. If you want to create a table in this markdown, then you follow the syntax
| column_01 | column_02 | column_N |
| --- | :--- | ---: |
| column_01 value | column_02_value | column_N_value |
• :--- means left-align the value
• ---: means right-align the value
The current work involves taking the contents of a file and outputting the content with | (pipes) between them, at the start of the line, and at the end of the line.
This is quite a manual process and one that I had done more than twice.
A perfect sign to start automating!
PowerShell
PowerShell came without any real effort or thought.
$file_path = '.\Documents\Versions.txt'
Get-Content -Path $file_path |
ForEach-Object -Process {
$login_date, $login_count = $_ -split '\t'
" | $login_date | $login_count | "
}
This seems pretty intuitive to me. Get the content and on each line split out the first part before the tab as the variable login_date and the second part as login_count.
After that, it’s a case of adding those variables into a string wrapped with pipes.
Python
Python was a bit more difficult to put together and, in the end, I’m not sure I’ve done more than a literal translation of PowerShell to Python. But, hey, it works!
with open(r'C:\Users\shane.oneill\Documents\Versions.txt', 'r') as f:
for line in f:
lg_mth, db_cnt = line.split()
print(f"| {lg_mth} | {db_cnt} |")
Now I can easily copy and paste this into TFS.
Hey, maybe even create a script as I’ll more than likely need to update this regularly going forward. The most important aspect I take from this is the fact that I can. I have the ability and the practical experience to try this and other examples like this again in the future.
Sin é
That’s it. It wasn’t so much an attempt at a revolutionary post as it was an attempt to get practical experience with Python. Also a chance to get stuck in to writing blog posts again.
Hopefully there’s more to come. Python, PowerShell, and all.