Formatting an output file.

Question

I'm currently indexing my music collection with python. Ideally I'd like my output file to be formatted as;

"Artist;
 Album;
             Tracks - length - bitrate - md5
Artist2;
 Album2;
             Tracks - length - bitrate - md5"

But I can't seem to work out how to achieve this. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

>>> import textwrap
>>> class Album(object):
...     def __init__(self, title, artist, tracks, length, bitrate, md5):
...         self.title=title
...         self.artist=artist
...         self.tracks=tracks
...         self.length=length
...         self.bitrate=bitrate
...         self.md5=md5
...     def __str__(self):
...         return textwrap.dedent("""
...         %(artist)s;
...         %(title)s;
...                       %(tracks)s - %(length)s - %(bitrate)s - %(md5)s"""%(vars(self)))
... 
>>> a=Album("album title","artist name",10,52.1,"320kb/s","4d53b0cb432ec371ca93ea30b62521d9")
>>> print a

artist name;
album title;
              10 - 52.1 - 320kb/s - 4d53b0cb432ec371ca93ea30b62521d9

Answer 2

If your input data is a list of tuples each with 6 strings (artist, album, tracks, length, bitrate, md5):

for artist, album, tracks, length, bitrate, md5 in input_data:
  print "%s;" % artist
  print "%s;" % album
  print "            %s - %s - %s - %s" % (tracks, length, bitrate, md5)

It's essentially just as easy if your input data is in a different format, but unless you tell us what format that input data is in, it's pretty silly for us to just try to guess.