Encode a column in CSV to Base64

Question

I'll preface by saying I'm a novice with Python, but I'm trying to encode a single column from a CSV to Base64 and write to another CSV. The file has 3 columns (consumer_id, sms_number, email_address) and I only want to encode the 'consumer_id'. Here is what I have as of now:

import base64

with open('File1.csv') as csvfile:

    with open('File2.csv', 'w') as newfile:

        reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)

        for i, r in enumerate(reader):
            #  writing csv headers
            if i == 0:
                newfile.write(','.join(r) + '\n')

            # convert 'ID' column to Base64
            r['consumer_id'] = base64.b64decode(parse.unquote(row['consumer_id']))

            # writing the new row to the file
            newfile.write(','.join(r.values()) + '\n')

The error I get is

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\script.py", line 93, in <module>
    r['consumer_id'] = base64.b64decode(parse.unquote(row['consumer_id']))
NameError: name 'parse' is not defined. Did you mean: 'vars'?

Answer 1

There are a few errors:

1. you did not import urllib, which is the reson for the error message that you got: -> from urllib import parse

2. you want to encode, not decode: -> base64.b64encode

3. you're also missing the import csv

4. row is not defined: -> change r to row

Full code:

import base64
import csv
from urllib import parse

with open('C:/temp/File1.csv') as csvfile:

    with open('C:/temp/File2.csv', 'w') as newfile:

        reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile)

        for i, row in enumerate(reader):
            #  writing csv headers
            if i == 0:
                newfile.write(','.join(row) + '\n')

            # convert 'ID' column to Base64
            row['consumer_id'] = base64.b64encode(parse.unquote(row['consumer_id']).encode()).decode()

            # writing the new row to the file
            newfile.write(','.join(row.values()) + '\n')