DEV Community: Vishesh Dvivedi

How to automate excel creation in Python

Vishesh Dvivedi — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 12:33:03 +0000

Programmers often deal with a LOT OF DATA. And if you are a Python programmer, or wish to become one, you will eventually have to deal with storing the program’s output data in an efficient way, be it web scraping, AI ML, we dev, or automation script.

Although saving data in files like txt, JSON, XML or HTML is nice, it may not provide a way to analyze the data easily. And that’s where excel files can be a big game-changer. Since excel files can be analyzed, and the data within them can be easily sorted or trimmed based on needs, with the help of software like Microsoft Excel, these files provide a user-friendly way to store data.

What’s up Pythoneers’ this is Vishesh Dvivedi and in this post, we are gonna learn how you can create excel files in python and how you can store data in them. This post will specifically focus on creating and storing data in excel files. If you guys want a post on reading data from an excel file, then do mention it in the comments below and I will make a post on it.

So without any further ado, let’s begin

So we are gonna start off with an empty python script right here. You can name the script whatever you want, I just named it excel.py. Now to start off, we will first import a module named xlsxwriter. This is a module you can find in python module packages, which is used to create excel files in python. You may find many other modules too that could do the same work, but I personally find this one to be the most commonly used and easy to understand.

First, you need to open the command prompt and type

pip install xlsxwriter

This command will install the xlsxwriter module onto your local system. Once that’s done, you can go back to your text editor (BTW i am using visual studio code, you can any IDE or text editor you want) and then type

import xlsxwriter

This line will import the xlsxwriter module onto our script, so that we can use all the classes and functions present within the module.

The first step to creating the excel file is, to create the excel file. So we will write

workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook(‘AllAboutPythonExcel.xlsx’)

This line will create an instance of workbook class, which represents the new excel file that we are creating. We have passed the name AllAboutPythonExcel as the excel’s name, you can name it whatever you like.

Next, we will add a sheet to our newly created excel file. An excel can consist of one or more than one excel sheet, which contains the data. You can see the sheets at the bottom left of your screen when you open an excel in Microsoft excel.

We are gonna write

worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()

If you guys want to name the worksheet, you can pass the name of the worksheet as a string onto the add_worksheet function, something like “firstSheet”

Now in order to enter data in excel, we need data, so we will consider this list as our sample data to add in the excel,

data = [
    {
        'name': "Edan Stein",
        'phone': "1-411-426-8735",
        'email': "facilisis.magna@aol.couk",
        'address': "594-6075 Elementum Ave",
        'country': "Belgium"
    },
    {
        'name': "Gretchen Whitfield",
        'phone': "(323) 253-9734",
        'email': "ipsum@protonmail.net",
        'address': "Ap #783-9102 Augue. Rd.",
        'country': "Netherlands"
    },
    {
        'name': "Violet Brooks",
        'phone': "1-389-367-4883",
        'email': "montes.nascetur.ridiculus@outlook.edu",
        'address': "Ap #814-4695 Odio. Street",
        'country': "India"
    },
    {
        'name': "Ethan Espinoza",
        'phone': "(428) 503-8130",
        'email': "vestibulum.lorem@yahoo.couk",
        'address': "3416 Suspendisse Rd.",
        'country': "Russian Federation"
    },
    {
        'name': "Martin Dunlap",
        'phone': "1-341-689-0165",
        'email': "natoque.penatibus@aol.couk",
        'address': "Ap #593-870 Rhoncus. Ave",
        'country': "Poland"
    }
]

We have a variable by the name data, which is a list containing multiple dictionaries, each containing data of an individual, We have a name, phone, email address, and country information with us.

Now one thing that you should understand is that the data in excel can be added using a for loop, so it will be better that the data you are gonna save in the excel, is present in the form of a collection, on which you can use a for loop, just like we have a list here.

So we will start by adding headers for the data we are gonna write in excel. We will write

worksheet.write(0, 0, ‘#’)
worksheet.write(0, 1, ‘Name’)
worksheet.write(0, 2,  ‘Phone’)
worksheet.write(0, 3, ‘Email’)
worksheet.write(0, 4, ‘Address’)
worksheet.write(0, 5, ‘Country’)

Write function is used to insert data at a specific row and column in excel. The first argument is the row number, the second argument is the column number and the third argument is the text you want to enter.

Since we are writing data at the top of the excel, the row number is zero, and the column number changes as we are writing data in the same row.

Now we will quickly create a for loop that will go through each dictionary object present inside the data list. We will use the enumerate function to also get the index of the iteration, which will be used to add data onto each row. We will write

for index, entry in enumerate(data):
    worksheet.write(index+1, 0, str(index))
    worksheet.write(index+1, 1, entry[‘name’])
    worksheet.write(index+1, 2, entry[‘phone’])
    worksheet.write(index+1, 3, entry[‘email’])
    worksheet.write(index+1, 4, entry[‘address’])
    worksheet.write(index+1, 5, entry[‘country’])

The for loop iterates through the entries in the data, and we use the worksheet.write function to keep adding data in excel. We are using index+1 as we have already added data to the excel at index 0.

Now to close off the excel, we will write,

workbook.close()

Here is the complete code:

import xlsxwriter

data = [
    {
        'name': "Edan Stein",
        'phone': "1-411-426-8735",
        'email': "facilisis.magna@aol.couk",
        'address': "594-6075 Elementum Ave",
        'country': "Belgium"
    },
    {
        'name': "Gretchen Whitfield",
        'phone': "(323) 253-9734",
        'email': "ipsum@protonmail.net",
        'address': "Ap #783-9102 Augue. Rd.",
        'country': "Netherlands"
    },
    {
        'name': "Violet Brooks",
        'phone': "1-389-367-4883",
        'email': "montes.nascetur.ridiculus@outlook.edu",
        'address': "Ap #814-4695 Odio. Street",
        'country': "India"
    },
    {
        'name': "Ethan Espinoza",
        'phone': "(428) 503-8130",
        'email': "vestibulum.lorem@yahoo.couk",
        'address': "3416 Suspendisse Rd.",
        'country': "Russian Federation"
    },
    {
        'name': "Martin Dunlap",
        'phone': "1-341-689-0165",
        'email': "natoque.penatibus@aol.couk",
        'address': "Ap #593-870 Rhoncus. Ave",
        'country': "Poland"
    }
]

workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook("AllAboutPythonExcel.xlsx")
worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet("firstSheet")

worksheet.write(0, 0, "#")
worksheet.write(0, 1, "Name")
worksheet.write(0, 2, "Phone")
worksheet.write(0, 3, "Email")
worksheet.write(0, 4, "Address")
worksheet.write(0, 5, "Country")

for index, entry in enumerate(data):
    worksheet.write(index+1, 0, str(index))
    worksheet.write(index+1, 1, entry["name"])
    worksheet.write(index+1, 2, entry["phone"])
    worksheet.write(index+1, 3, entry["email"])
    worksheet.write(index+1, 4, entry["address"])
    worksheet.write(index+1, 5, entry["country"])

workbook.close()

If you run the script, you can see the script has created an excel file by the name AllAboutPythonExcel, the exact same name which we gave as an input to the script.

If we open the excel file, we can see the name of the sheet as firstSheet, again the same name which we gave as an input, and we can see all our data inside the excel.

If you want to make this code reusable, such that you can use it for your other python projects, you can create a function something like this.

def generate_excel(workbook_name: str, worksheet_name: str, headers_list: list, data: list):

    # Creating workbook
    workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook(workbook_name)

    # Creating worksheet
    worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet(worksheet_name)

    # Adding headers
    for index, header in enumerate(headers_list):
        worksheet.write(0, index, str(header).capitalize())

    # Adding data
    for index1, entry in enumerate(data):
        for index2, header in enumerate(headers_list):
            worksheet.write(index1+1, index2, entry[header])

    # Close workbook
    workbook.close()

You can pass values to this function and the function will automatically perform the above-explained operations and create the excel for you.

As you can see here, the function requires parameters, the name of the excel, the name of the sheet, the list of keys contained in the data list, and finally the data list. The excel generated will look the same as it was created above.

All the code used in this post is uploaded on GitHub:

itsallaboutpython / Excel-Creation

That’s all there is in this blog post, hope you liked the post, if you did don’t forget to follow.

Also, you can watch a detailed video of the same topic on my YouTube Channel
YouTube Channel

With this, it’s time for me to go, this is Vishesh Dvivedi, signing off

Real-Time Chat Application In Python

Vishesh Dvivedi — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 16:01:18 +0000

What's up Pythoneers ! This is Vishesh Dvivedi and in this blog post I am gonna show you how you can create a real-time chat application in python, using tkinter module and socket programming.

This blog will discuss about socket programming, tkinter module and how you can integrate them both.

About the application

The repository of this application consists of two python files, server.py and client.py. server.py is the script that runs the server, which all the clients will use to communicate to each other. And client.py will be used by the client to connect to server and send messages to other clients.

So we will start off by server.py script

Creating server.py

First off, we will import all the required modules of server.py

import socket
import threading

We would need socket module to communicate with clients and threading module to create a thread that would keep listening for messages from clients.

Next we will set up some variables

HOST = '127.0.0.1'
PORT = 1234 
LISTENER_LIMIT = 5
active_clients = []

HOST and PORT here determines the host and port at which the server will run, LISTENER_LIMIT stores the amount of clients that will be able to connect to a server at a time. And finally, active_clients will store all the users that will be connected to the server at any instance

Next we will create the listen_for_messages function

def listen_for_messages(client, username):

    while 1:

        message = client.recv(2048).decode('utf-8')
        if message != '':

            final_msg = username + '~' + message
            send_messages_to_all(final_msg)

        else:
            print(f"The message send from client {username} is 
empty")

This function will keep listening for messages from the connected clients. In case if it received a message, it will call the send_message_to_all function to send the received message to all currently connected clients.

Next we create the send_message_to_client function

def send_message_to_client(client, message):

    client.sendall(message.encode())

This function is used to send message to a single client

Next we create the send_message_to_all function

def send_messages_to_all(message):

    for user in active_clients:

        send_message_to_client(user[1], message)

This function will send a message to all connected clients by calling the send_message function for each connected client.

Next we create the client_handler function

def client_handler(client):

    # Server will listen for client message that will
    # Contain the username
    while 1:

        username = client.recv(2048).decode('utf-8')
        if username != '':
            active_clients.append((username, client))
            prompt_message = "SERVER~" + f"{username} added to 
the chat"
            send_messages_to_all(prompt_message)
            break
        else:
            print("Client username is empty")

    threading.Thread(target=listen_for_messages, args=(client, 
username, )).start()

This function will use the client object (explained later in this blog) which we get when we connect to a client, to get username from a client, add the client to the list of active clients, and start a listener thread which will keep listening for new messages from the client.
Note: This function is also executed as a thread, for each new connected client.

def main():

    server = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)


    try:
        server.bind((HOST, PORT))
        print(f"Running the server on {HOST} {PORT}")
    except:
        print(f"Unable to bind to host {HOST} and port 
{PORT}")

    server.listen(LISTENER_LIMIT)

    while 1:

        client, address = server.accept()
    print(f"Successfully connected to client {address[0]} {address[1]}")

    threading.Thread(target=client_handler, args=(client, )).start()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

And finally we have the main function, which performs the work of:

Creating a socket (that acts as the server)
Binding IP and Port to the server
Setting up listener limit
Accept any upcoming connection from clients
Calling the client handler for any new connected client

That's all for the server side code, The server side code is a bit long to explain in a single blog, so I have created this playlist on YouTube, where I explain all the code, both server and client side code. So do check out this playlist to understand the client side code as well.

Link to playlist: How To Create A Real-Time Chat App In Python Using Socket Programming

Get Colored Console Output In Python Using Colorama

Vishesh Dvivedi — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 06:25:36 +0000

In this blog I am gonna talk about a python module that can make your console based applications look much better than they normally look, the colorama module.

Here's how a normal console application looks without using colorama.

And here's how the same script would look with some color effects.

Isn't that beautiful !!!

All of this was possible due to colorama module. And we are gonna learn how we can use this module in python.

About The Module

Colorama is a python module that is used to display colored output in console. It can change both, foreground and background color of any text which is displayed in the console.

The link to its github repository is this:
colorama.

Getting Started With Colorama

First you need to download and install colorama. Just open your command prompt and type the following:

For Windows:

pip install colorama

For Linux:

sudo pip3 install colorama

This will automatically download and install colorama in your system.

(Note: you should have pip installed in your system for this to work, If it is not, check out this blog and setup your pip)

Once your colorama is installed, you can import colorama in any of your python script and use it. Now let's learn how to use it within our scripts.

Using colorama

1. Initializing colorama

First we have to initialize colorama by running the init method, like this:

from colorama import init
init()

On Windows, calling init() will filter ANSI escape sequences out of any text sent to stdout or stderr, and replace them with equivalent Win32 calls.

On other platforms, it's not of much use. So don't forget to call this function is your script runs on Windows.

2. Colored Output

It's time we write our first colored output on the screen, like this:

from colorama import init, Fore, Back, Style

init()
print(" Normal white color")
print(Fore.RED + " Letters will be in red ")
print(Back.GREEN + " Background will be green " + 
Style.RESET\_ALL)
print(Style.DIM + Fore.RED + Back.GREEN + " And style will be 
dim " + Style.RESET\_ALL)
print(" And everything is back to normal")

The output would look like this:

As you might understand, you can change the foreground letter color using the Fore class and selecting the correct color constant you want to use. You can change background color using Back class and change style of letters using Style class.

Here are the possible foreground, background and style class.


 {style="background-color: #f9f9f9; border: 1px solid rgb(211, 211, 211); box-sizing: inherit; color: #6c6c6c; font-family: "Source Code Pro", monospace; font-size: 0.85rem; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 30px; overflow: auto; padding: 15px;"}
Fore: BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, MAGENTA, CYAN, WHITE, RESET.
Back: BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, MAGENTA, CYAN, WHITE, RESET.
Style: DIM, NORMAL, BRIGHT, RESET_ALL

Note: The color effects that you will place will remain consistent, unless you call deinit() function or mention Fore.RESET, Back.RESET or Style.RESET_ALL.

3. Using termcolor

You can also use termcolor (in Windows) to color a specific portion of the console output

from colorama import init
from termcolor import colored

init()

print(colored("This is in red color", "red"))
print(colored("This is in yellow color", "yellow"))
print(colored("This is in blue color", "blue"))
print(colored("This is in cyan color", "cyan"))
print(colored("This is in green color", "green"))
print(colored("This is in magenta color", "magenta"))

just import colored function from termcolor and use it as following:

print( colored( "string to color",  "color name" ) )

Conclusion

Overall this is a very awesome module and I bet you should definitely try using this module within your scripts, to give it a more professional look and feel.

Hope this blog helped you all :)

You can follow me on
YouTube,
Instagram,
Linkedin.

Send Bulk WhatsApp Messages In Python | Automate WhatsApp Using Python

Vishesh Dvivedi — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 04:02:59 +0000

What’s up pythoneers, I’m back again with another blog on my channel All About Python. If you have been following my channel, you would know that I have started a python automation playlist where I attempt to automate various well-known apps and APIs using python. And three such blog have been performing really well, especially the Instagram automation blog . So I decided to, this time, make a blog on automating WhatsApp messaging with python, and next, I will make a blog on automating Twitter. So
don’t forget to subscribe to my channel and click on the bell icon so that you are notified whenever I upload a new blog

This blog will focus on creating a python script that will read the phone numbers, names, and messages from excel and then send bulk WhatsApp messages to the respective phone numbers. One catch here is that the phone number should be saved on the device which is being used to send the WhatsApp message.

In this blog , I am gonna discuss, about

WhatsApp Web and how this script uses it
Function wise analysis of the script
Quick demo explaining the working of the script
An alternative way to create the script.
Some ideas for modifications and improvements within the script

Let’s start with WhatsApp Web:

WhatsApp Web

WhatsApp Web is a feature of WhatsApp that lets you operate your
WhatsApp from your laptop or desktop browser. The steps to use WhatsApp web are pretty simple, just open a chrome browser within your computer and open site web.whatsapp.com, next scan the appearing QR code using your phone, and your WhatsApp will appear on the chrome browser. Here you can message anyone or any group or can see WhatsApp status.

This script uses the selenium library to automate the browser and send bulk messages to multiple contacts within WhatsApp.

With the basic working of the script understood, let’s move on to
functional-wise analysis of the script.



import art, time, os, platform
from colorama import init, Fore
from termcolor import colored
import pandas as pd
import datetime
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains

The script starts by importing all the required modules.

The art module is used to create and display ASCII art for the script. If you wanna know how it works, you can check out this blog.
Time is used to halt program execution for some seconds using time.sleep()
OS is used to run operating system commands within the script.
The platform module is used to identify the operating system.

Together, os and platform are used to clear the screen, as you can see
here.

Colorama and termcolor are used to display colored console output of the script. If you wanna know more about them, you can check out this blog.
Pandas is used to read data from the excel file.
Datetime is used to find the current date and time.
And finally, we have selenium. All these import statements you see here are just importing
Required classes and functions from selenium.



FILE_LOC = "data.xlsx"
SRNO = 'SRNO'
NAME = 'Name'
PHONENUMBER = 'Phone Number'
MESSAGE = 'Message'
REPLACENAME = '{{name}}'
URL = 'https://web.whatsapp.com/'
WAITER_ELEMENT = "landing-title _3-XoE"
PHONE_NUMER_INPUT = "//*[@id='side']/div[1]/div/label/div/div[2]"
PERSON_DIV = "//*[@id='pane-side']/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div/div/img"
MESSAGE_INPUT = "//*[@id='main']/footer/div[1]/div[2]/div/div[1]/div/div[2]"
SEND_BUTTON = "//*[@id='main']/footer/div[1]/div[2]/div/div[2]/button"

Next, we have all the constants used within the script, including the URL, excel field names, button, and textbox xpaths, etc. Just a quick idea, xpaths are basically like search filters that are used to identify a certain element or a group of elements within an HTML page.



driver = webdriver.Chrome('chromedriver.exe')
driver.implicitly_wait(10)
waiter = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)
data = []

Next, we have started and configured the driver and waiter of our
script.



def printData(message, type):
    if type == 'INFO':
        print('[' + colored(datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S'), 'cyan') + '][' + colored('INFO', 'green') +  '] ' + message)
    elif type == 'WARNING':
        print('[' + colored(datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S'), 'cyan') + '][' + colored('WARNING', 'yellow') +  '] ' + message)
    elif type == 'ERROR':
        print('[' + colored(datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S'), 'cyan') + '][' + colored('ERROR', 'red') +  '] ' + message)

Now we have the first function of our script, the printData function.

This function requires two arguments, message, and type. This function is used to print colored data on the console, either informational, warning or error.The function simply checks what is the type passed onto it and accordingly prints the message on the console.



def read_data_from_excel():
    try:
        df = pd.read_excel(FILE_LOC)
        printData("Retrieving data from excel", 'INFO')
    except:
        printData("Excel 'data.xlsx' not found", 'ERROR')
    printData("Found {0} messages to be send".format(len(df.index)), 'INFO')
    for i in df.index:
        if '+' not in str(df[PHONENUMBER][i]):
            number = '+91' + str(df[PHONENUMBER][i])
        else:
            number = str(df[PHONENUMBER][i])
        output = {
            'SrNo': df[SRNO][i],
            'Name': df[NAME][i],
            'PhoneNumber': number,
            'Message': df[MESSAGE][i].replace(REPLACENAME, df[NAME][i])
        }
        data.append(output)

Next, we have the read_data_from_excel() function that reads all the messages to be sent from the data.xlsx file. The function uses the pandas' library to read the data from excel and store the excel entries in a data list within the script.



def send_whatsapp_message():
    global driver
    driver.get(URL)
    printData("Loading site...", 'INFO')
    waiter.until(EC.title_is("WhatsApp"))
    printData("Site loaded successfully...", 'INFO')
    printData("Waiting for user to log in using WhatsApp Web", 'INFO')
    waitCounter = 0
    while 1:
        try:
            waiter.until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//canvas[@aria-label='Scan me!']")))
            waitCounter+=1
            if waitCounter%1000 == 0:
                printData("Waiting for user to log in...", 'WARNING')
        except:
            printData("Logged in to WhatsApp", 'INFO')
            break

    for entry in data:
        driver.find_element_by_xpath(PHONE_NUMER_INPUT).send_keys(str(entry['PhoneNumber']))
        time.sleep(5)
        driver.find_element_by_xpath(PHONE_NUMER_INPUT).send_keys(Keys.ENTER)
        time.sleep(5)
        driver.find_element_by_xpath(MESSAGE_INPUT).send_keys(str(entry['Message']))
        time.sleep(5)
        driver.find_element_by_xpath(SEND_BUTTON).click()
        time.sleep(5)
        printData("Successfully send message to {0}, name: {1}".format(str(entry['PhoneNumber']), str(entry['Name'])), 'INFO')

Next, we have the most important function of the script, which is the send_whatsapp_message() function. This function is responsible for reading contacts from the data list and one-by-one send WhatsApp messages to each one of them.

The function starts by loading the WhatsApp website and waiting for it to load. Once the site is loaded, the script waits for the user to scan the QR code and log in to the site. Once the user is logged in, the script searches for each contact, opens its chat, types the message, and sends it.



if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Initialize colorama
    init()

    # Clear the screen
    if platform.system() == 'Windows':
        os.system('cls')
    else:
        os.system('clear')

    # Display ASCII art
    print(art.text2art("WhatsApp Python"))
    print(Fore.CYAN + "\nCreated By:" + Fore.RESET + " Vishesh Dvivedi [All About Python]\n")
    print(Fore.YELLOW + "GitHub: " + Fore.RESET + "   visheshdvivedi")
    print(Fore.YELLOW + "Youtube:" + Fore.RESET + "   All About Python")
    print(Fore.YELLOW + "Instagram:" + Fore.RESET + " @itsallaboutpython")
    print(Fore.YELLOW + "Blog Site:" + Fore.RESET + " itsallaboutpython.blogspot.com\n")


    # Read data from 'data.xlsx' file
    read_data_from_excel()

    # Send whatsapp message 
    send_whatsapp_message()

    # Close chromedriver
    driver.close()

And finally, we have the main function. In case you are unclear with the use of if __name__ == ‘__main__’, then you can check out a blog on my channel dedicated to this topic.

Within the main function, first, init() is used to initialize Colorama. Next, I have used a code snippet to execute an OS command to clear the screen, based on the operating system used. Next, the art module is used to display the ASCII are for the script, and below that, you will find contact information about me, in case you want to contact me.

And finally, we call the read_data_from_excel() and
send_whatsapp_message() function which performs the rest of the
functions, as we discussed before. And then we end the script by closing the driver.

That’s all there is in this script. Here is the full code.



import art, time, os, platform
from colorama import init, Fore
from termcolor import colored
import pandas as pd
import datetime
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains

FILE_LOC = "data.xlsx"
SRNO = 'SRNO'
NAME = 'Name'
PHONENUMBER = 'Phone Number'
MESSAGE = 'Message'
REPLACENAME = '{{name}}'
URL = 'https://web.whatsapp.com/'
WAITER_ELEMENT = "landing-title _3-XoE"
PHONE_NUMER_INPUT = "//*[@id='side']/div[1]/div/label/div/div[2]"
PERSON_DIV = "//*[@id='pane-side']/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div/div/img"
MESSAGE_INPUT = "//*[@id='main']/footer/div[1]/div[2]/div/div[1]/div/div[2]"
SEND_BUTTON = "//*[@id='main']/footer/div[1]/div[2]/div/div[2]/button"

driver = webdriver.Chrome('chromedriver.exe')
driver.implicitly_wait(10)
waiter = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)
data = []

def printData(message, type):
    if type == 'INFO':
        print('[' + colored(datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S'), 'cyan') + '][' + colored('INFO', 'green') +  '] ' + message)
    elif type == 'WARNING':
        print('[' + colored(datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S'), 'cyan') + '][' + colored('WARNING', 'yellow') +  '] ' + message)
    elif type == 'ERROR':
        print('[' + colored(datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S'), 'cyan') + '][' + colored('ERROR', 'red') +  '] ' + message)

def read_data_from_excel():
    try:
        df = pd.read_excel(FILE_LOC)
        printData("Retrieving data from excel", 'INFO')
    except:
        printData("Excel 'data.xlsx' not found", 'ERROR')
    printData("Found {0} messages to be send".format(len(df.index)), 'INFO')
    for i in df.index:
        if '+' not in str(df[PHONENUMBER][i]):
            number = '+91' + str(df[PHONENUMBER][i])
        else:
            number = str(df[PHONENUMBER][i])
        output = {
            'SrNo': df[SRNO][i],
            'Name': df[NAME][i],
            'PhoneNumber': number,
            'Message': df[MESSAGE][i].replace(REPLACENAME, df[NAME][i])
        }
        data.append(output)

def send_whatsapp_message():
    global driver
    driver.get(URL)
    printData("Loading site...", 'INFO')
    waiter.until(EC.title_is("WhatsApp"))
    printData("Site loaded successfully...", 'INFO')
    printData("Waiting for user to log in using WhatsApp Web", 'INFO')
    waitCounter = 0
    while 1:
        try:
            waiter.until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//canvas[@aria-label='Scan me!']")))
            waitCounter+=1
            if waitCounter%1000 == 0:
                printData("Waiting for user to log in...", 'WARNING')
        except:
            printData("Logged in to WhatsApp", 'INFO')
            break

    for entry in data:
        driver.find_element_by_xpath(PHONE_NUMER_INPUT).send_keys(str(entry['PhoneNumber']))
        time.sleep(5)
        driver.find_element_by_xpath(PHONE_NUMER_INPUT).send_keys(Keys.ENTER)
        time.sleep(5)
        driver.find_element_by_xpath(MESSAGE_INPUT).send_keys(str(entry['Message']))
        time.sleep(5)
        driver.find_element_by_xpath(SEND_BUTTON).click()
        time.sleep(5)
        printData("Successfully send message to {0}, name: {1}".format(str(entry['PhoneNumber']), str(entry['Name'])), 'INFO')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Initialize colorama
    init()

    # Clear the screen
    if platform.system() == 'Windows':
        os.system('cls')
    else:
        os.system('clear')

    # Display ASCII art
    print(art.text2art("WhatsApp Python"))
    print(Fore.CYAN + "\nCreated By:" + Fore.RESET + " Vishesh Dvivedi [All About Python]\n")
    print(Fore.YELLOW + "GitHub: " + Fore.RESET + "   visheshdvivedi")
    print(Fore.YELLOW + "Youtube:" + Fore.RESET + "   All About Python")
    print(Fore.YELLOW + "Instagram:" + Fore.RESET + " @itsallaboutpython")
    print(Fore.YELLOW + "Blog Site:" + Fore.RESET + " itsallaboutpython.blogspot.com\n")


    # Read data from 'data.xlsx' file
    read_data_from_excel()

    # Send whatsapp message 
    send_whatsapp_message()

    # Close chromedriver
    driver.close()

Let’s go through a quick demo to see how it works.

WhatsApp Automation Python

This is how the script looks like when it is executed. I have the chrome browser right here and the web.whatsapp.com site is opened right here. Now I will scan the QR code using WhatsApp and my WhatsApp will appear in front of my screen.

After this, the script will, one by one, search for contacts from all the contacts, open their chat, and then it will automatically message them. If the message is of multiple lines, then a message will be sent for each line.

I hope this cleared your doubts about this script. In case you still have any doubts left, you can mention it down in the comments below.

All of this code may be a bit confusing for some of you, and you may wonder whether there is an alternative and easy way to make this code. There is!

pywhatkit

There is a module by the name pywhatkit, which contains a method that allows you to send custom WhatsApp messages. If you guys want, I will make a separate blog explaining pywhatkit to you all.

Now comes the last topic of this blog , Ideas for modifications and improvements in the blog . I had created this script just to explain to you all how you can create this script. However, there are still a ton of modifications and improvements that can be done within the script.

For example, you can add a time system to it which will allow you to send WhatsApp messages at a specific time and day. For that, you’ll have to add a while loop before calling the send_whatsapp_message. The loop will check after every minute the current time. If it matches the time to send the WhatsApp message, the loop will break and the message will be sent.

Similarly, you can create a constant for wait time and that constant can be used to find out how much wait should be done while sending the message, as WhatsApp web may block this python script in some cases.

That’s all in this blog guys, hope you liked my blog . If you did, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel to check for various other automation scripts that I have created for Instagram and YouTube.

With this, it's time for me to go, this is Vishesh Dvivedi, signing off.

Simple Python Projects for Beginners With Source Code

Vishesh Dvivedi — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 04:41:42 +0000

I believe that the best way to master any programming language is to
create real-life projects using that language. The same is the case with
the python programming language. If you are a beginner python
programmer, and you want to master the python programming language, then it's really important that you start creating real-life projects using python language.

Now it can be a bit difficult for beginner programmers to find projects
that are easy for them to build along with the source code for research
and analysis as to how the project works. So I have created a list of
the top 10 easy python project ideas for beginners along with their
source code.

As you will progress through this post, the project difficulty level
will keep going higher. As a beginner programmer, you should be able to
create all these projects by yourself, as you go through your
programming journey.

If you liked my post, don’t forget to check out other posts on my blog
site.

You can also check out my YouTube channel, where I already have a video
on this topic.

So let’s start with our list

1. Calculator

The calculator is probably one of the most common project ideas that you will see in many youtube videos. And the reason for this is that it is
very easy to make and it will clear your basic concepts regarding
if-else statements and while loop.

The calculator will start by asking what the user wants to do, like:

Addition
Subtraction
Multiplication
Division, and
Exit

Based on the option, the script will either add, subtract, multiply or
divide the numbers that the user entered. Once the operation is
complete, the script will again ask the user its choice. If the user
chooses to exit, the program will stop.
You can find this project source code
here.

2. Dice Rolling Simulator

This project is, again, an easy one, but at the same time, a very
crucial one as it will introduce beginner python programmers to the
random library. Random library is used to generate pseudo-random
results. We call its output pseudo-random as the output we get is not
100% random, but still is, pretty much random.

This script will ask the user whether to roll the dice or exit the game.
If the user chooses to roll the dice, the script will use the random
module, to get a random number between 1 and 6 and display it to the
user. If the user chooses to exit, the program will simply exit.

You can find this project source code
here

3. Number Guessing Game

This project is similar to the dice rolling simulator, which means that
this project also uses the random module to generate random numbers.
However, this project also has some extra logic in it, that turns this
project into a fun game to play.

In this game, the script will randomly get a number between 1 and 10 and
the user has to guess which number it is. Depending on the user’s
entered number, the script will tell if the actual number is greater
than or less than the original number. In the end, the script will tell
how many tries the user took to guess the number.

You can find this project source code
here

4. Value Converter

Its name can be a bit confusing to understand, but the project in itself
is very easy to make. The script that we will make within this project,
will be used to perform some common conversions between different
measurement units, like Celsius to Fahrenheit, rupee to pound,
centimeter to foot, etc.

Initially, this script will only be able to perform some basic
conversions that require very basic mathematics. But as you improve your
programming skills, and get introduced to the NumPy library, you can add
the functionality of doing some more complex conversions like
calculating the area and perimeter of a circle with a given radius. (you
would need the value of pi for this conversion, which you can get from
the NumPy library)

You can find this project source code
here.

5. Countdown Timer

Its name is pretty self-explanatory. Within this project, we will create
a script that will have the ability to start a countdown timer for a
certain amount of time. The user will first enter the number of seconds
that the countdown should count, Once the amount is entered, the script
will start the countdown and the script will wait for the entered amount
of seconds to complete.

It will work just like a countdown that you can find on your watch or
smartphone.

You can find the project source code
here.

6. Password Strength Checker

Whenever you create an account on a site by entering your username and
password, the site ensures that the password you are trying to save is
strong, so that hackers cannot guess your passwords easily.

In this project, we are gonna mimic the site, functionality into a
console-based python project, This script will check the strength of the
password that the user will enter. The script will show the number of
alphabets, numbers, special characters, and whitespace characters
present within the password and will accordingly mark the password’s
strength.

The best password will be the one containing at least one uppercase
letter, one lowercase letter, one digit, one special character, and one
whitespace. So it’s time you change your Gmail password.

You can find this project source code
here.

7. Hangman Game

Do you remember this game that you used to play? where your friend would
guess a letter and write the number of letters in the word in the form
of underscores and then you would have to guess the word in few chances?
This project is exactly this game but made in python.

Hangman is again a very common project to be built by beginner
programmers. In this game, the script will randomly pick a word from a
list of words, show to the user the number of letters in the word and
the user has to guess the word by guessing each letter that may appear
in the word. The user will have 7 chances to guess a letter that may be
present within the word. If he or she is unable to guess the word within
7 chances, the user will lose the game.

You can create this project and have fun with your friends while showing
off your programming skills (definitely gonna impress some girls :D)

You can find this project source code
here.

8. Tic Tac Toe

If you haven’t heard of this game, or have not played it before, you
must have had a rough childhood, just kidding :D.

Tic tac toe is a popular, two-player game that involves two players
playing on a 3 by 3 board, where each player tries to make three
consecutive of their mark. Whoever is able to do it, will win, else
there will be a tie. This project will try to make a tic tac toe game in
python as a console application. The application would require an
understanding about 2D lists in python.

Not only you can create this project, but you can also create an
undefeatable version of the tic tac toe game in python. If you wanna
know how to make it, you can check out this blog
here

You can find the project source code
here.

9. Rock, Paper, Scissor

This project will mimic the rock paper scissor game, which I am very
sure you will know, Here the user will act as one player, and the
computer will act as another user. While the user will choose an object
from rock, paper, and scissors, the script will also choose an object.
Based on user choice, the script will see who won and show the output to
the user.

You can find the project source code
here.

10. User Record Management System

Have you ever wondered how the software that manages the data of
millions of users works? maybe you can make a smaller version of that
software using python.

This project will focus on clearly understanding the concept of CRUD
operation, which is created, read, update and delete. The script will
maintain a database within python dictionary and provide users with the
option to create an entry, read a single or all entries, update any
existing entry, or delete any entry. Those who are aware about OOP can
also attempt to create this project while following the OOP paradigm.

You can find the project source code
here

Conclusion

Those were the top 10 easy python projects for beginners. I have created
these 10 projects for you all and uploaded them on GitHub, you can find
the link
here

But honestly, I would want you all to try building these projects by
yourself as it will add more value to your programming skills.
Obviously, you can contact me anytime on Instagram, or by joining my
discord server. I will try my best to respond to your queries as
accurately as possible.

If you liked this post, don’t forget to check out my other posts.

You can also check out my YouTube channel
here

Thanks for watching and take care

Simple Script To Send Emails In Python

Vishesh Dvivedi — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 06:02:57 +0000

Emails are, nowadays, a common way of formal communication, which is also good for the transfer of files easily from person to person. Almost every person who has some identity over the internet, or simply uses it, has an email ID of his own, be it Gmail or outlook.

Now of all the awesome stuff that can be done in python, one of those is to be able to send or receive emails. Python programming
libraries can be used to send mails or to list all the mails within your email account. You can also perform some basic actions, like marking the mail as read, using python.

And in this blog, I am gonna show you, how you can do this yourself.

About Mail Servers

Before we start with the coding part, you need to have some basic
information about mails and mail servers.

Mail servers are basically servers that are used to manage emails, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. have their own mail servers that manage their mail services. Mail servers can further be classified into two categories;

SMTP Server

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.This server is responsible for sending or transferring mail from server to server i.e. whenever you send a mail to someone, you typically make use of the SMTP server.

IMAP Server

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol.This server is responsible for storing and listing mails from your server i.e. whenever you open your Gmail or Outlook, you typically make use of the IMAP server.

SSL and TLS

There are two types of encryption protocols used for
emails, SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security).
Whenever you will connect to any mail server, you will connect through one of these protocols. Each protocol has its port assigned to the server.

TLS - port 587
SSL - port 465

Although Gmail and Outlook server support both these protocols, we are gonna use only TLS protocol in this post for simplicity.

Sending Mails using Python

Now that we are clear about mail servers, let's create our first script to send mail using python

Installing the library

We will be using the smtplib library of python to send Gmail or Outlook mail. This library comes built-in in python, so you don't need to download it from elsewhere.

Creating the script

Here's how the script would look like

The script may look complicated, but we will go line-by-line to discuss each function and class of the script and understand its use

The script starts with importing smtplib and getpass library. We are using the getpass library so that we can retrieve the password from the
user.

After that, we ask the user to enter the credentials for their mail account, which will be used to send the mail. We use getpass to ask the user for the password. Since we are using getpass, the password that the user will enter will not be displayed on the screen but will be saved within the variable.

In the next step, we set up the SMTP server host and port to be used. If the entered email ID is a Gmail account, the host will be set to Gmail SMTP server, or else if it is Outlook, the ost
will be set to Outlook SMTP server.
We set the port to 587 as we had discussed above within the 'SSL and TLS heading. In case if the entered email ID cannot be identified as Gmail or
Outlook, the script will give an error message and exit.

In the next step, we will create the SMTP class object, which will be used to perform the actions. We create an object of smtplib.SMTP class and save the object by the name 'server'. The class object requires two parameters, the hostname, and the port.

Once we have created the object, we call the ehlo() function of the class object, which is basically used to send a greeting message to the mail server. This step is crucial, as not performing this step may cause problems in communicating with the mail server.

After receiving a successful response from the server, we call the starttls() function to start TLS encryption. This step is only required for TLS connection and not for SSL connection.

After this, we call the login() function to log in to the mail account. The function requires two parameters, the email ID and the password, which we had retrieved from the user.

Once we have successfully logged in, we ask the user for the receiver's email ID, mail's subject, and mail body.

And finally, we call the sendmail() function and pass three parameters, sender mail ID, receiver mail ID, and the mail body (created by merging mail subject and mail content).

Here is the full code

import smtplib
import getpass

# Get email ID and password from user
email = input("Enter email ID: ")
password = getpass.getpass("Enter password: ")

# Set SMTP host and port
if "gmail" in email:
    host = "smtp.gmail.com"
    port = 587
elif "outlook" in email:
    host = "smtp-mail.outlook.com"
    port = 587
else:
    print("Invalid email ID, please try again")
    exit(0)

# Create SMTPLib object and contact server
server = smtplib.SMTP(host, port)
check = server.ehlo()
if check[0] == 250:
    print("Successfully contacted mail server")
else:
    print("Unable to contact server")
    exit(0)

# Start TLS encryption (only to be done if conencting to port 587 i.e. TLS)
server.starttls()

# Logging into the server
try:
    server.login(email, password)
    print("Login successful")
except smtplib.SMTPAuthenticationError as ex:     
    print("Exception:", ex)    
    exit(0)

# Get email details from user
sender_mail = email
receiver_email = input("Enter receiver's email: ")
subject = input("Enter email subject: ")
content = input("Enter email content: ")

# Create email body by merging emails object and content
body = "Subject: " + subject + '\n' + content

# Send the mail
output = server.sendmail(sender_mail, receiver_email, body)
if not len(output):
    print("Send mail successfully")
else:
    print("Unable to send mail, please try again")    
    exit(0)

And that's it, you have successfully sent a mail through python

Conclusion

In this blog, I have only covered sending mail through python. I will soon create another blog that will deal with accessing email from accounts by contacting the IMAP servers using python.

Hope you liked this blog

Stay safe, stay blessed, and thanks for reading.

Zip Function In Python

Vishesh Dvivedi — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 18:13:56 +0000

The zip function in python is a great function that is used to merge two
or more iterable items into one, and that too by index. It's a built-in
function of python language which can make your life easy when you have
data with different formats but need to join them somehow.

Before we start with the zip function, let's talk about the iterable
data types in python.

Iterable Data Types In Python

Iterable data types are basically those data types that can be iterated
i.e. a for-in-the-loop can be used to go through each element within
them. Some examples of iterable data types are lists, tuples, sets, etc.

lists_example = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
tuple_example = (1, 2, 3)
sets_example = {1, 2, 3}

Any of these data types can be passed onto a for-in loop which will
iterate through each of their elements.

What does the zip() function has to do with iterable data types?

Assume a situation where you have to display data of students that study
in a school. You happen the have to have lists of data of students. But
the catch here is that all the names are in one list, and all their
student IDs are on one list, like this:

student_names = ["Alex", "Murphy", "Jinny", "George"]
student_ids = [700405, 700465, 700487, 700502]

How will you print student's information together?

One approach can be to use for loop to print values by index, like this:

for i in range(len(student_names)):    
    print("ID: {0} name: {1}".format(student_ids[i], student_names[i]))

But what if you want the output in the form of a list contains tuples
for each student with its name and ID in it?

This is where the zip function comes into play !!!

You can achieve the above-mentioned results easily using the zip
function, list this:

final_result = list(zip(student_ids, student_names))

And that's it! That's all you'll have to do.

The output of the zip function would look something like this:

[(700405, 'Alex'), (700465, 'Murphy'), (700487, 'Jinny'), (700502, 'George')]

Isn't that neat !!!

How to reverse the effects of zip function?

Although there are various ways to undo the effects of the zip function,
the best approach will be to use the zip function and pass the list with
the * operator to unzip like this

list_to_unzip = [(700405, 'Alex'), (700465, 'Murphy'), (700487, 'Jinny'), (700502, 'George')]

unzipped = zip(*list_to_unzip)

The value of unzipped will be like this:

[(700405, 700465, 700487, 700502), ('Alex', 'Murphy', 'Jinny', 'George')]

Conclusion

I hope this article helped you to understand the working of the zip
function and would add up to your existing knowledge of python.

In case of any doubts, you can comment down all your queries and I will
try to solve them as soon as possible.

Also, don't forget to check out my YouTube
Channel if you liked this article

With this, it's time for me to go, this is All About Python, signing off