Convert .dbc files into .csv with python

Question

I'm writing a python script to convert .DBC files (from Datasus) into .CSV.

I've searched a lot some libs to help me but didn't get success with any of them. Do someone know an option/package which could be useful in this conversion task?

Answer 1

I really don't understand why some members give -1 to the question, but don't really answer it.

Well, I've not found out a good lib to convert .DBC to .CSV. But I could do it using Python + R and I'm sharing here how I achieved it.

The Python script below gets R path and executes the dbc2csv.R file sending three args: the raw file path, converted file path, and the file name that will be converted.

import subprocess
import commands


def dbc2csv(raw_filename):
dbc2csv_path = "/path/to/script/dbc2csv.R " + raw_files_dir + " " + converted_files_dir + " " + raw_filename

try:
    r_script_path = commands.getstatusoutput('which Rscript')[1]
    subprocess.call(r_script_path + " --vanilla " + dbc2csv_path, shell=True)
    return True
except:
    print("(Rscript) Error converting file: " + raw_filename)

return False

The R script dbc2csv.R bellow is actually who will convert.

#install.packages("read.dbc") You need this package
library("read.dbc")


dbc2dbf <- function(rawDir, convertedDir, file) {
    # reads dbc file
    x <- read.dbc(paste(rawDir, file, sep=""))
    # write it to csv
    write.csv(x, file=paste(convertedDir, file, ".csv", sep=""))
}

args = commandArgs(trailingOnly=TRUE)
try(dbc2dbf(args[1], args[2], args[3]), TRUE)

We do know it would be better if we could convert using just Python. But this approach will work fine.