How to Convert CSV to HTML in Python

Learn how to make quick, easy conversions from CSV to HTML format.

When we represent tabular data sets in CSV format, it’s usually part of an effort to keep things simple and lightweight. CSV files are composed of plain unformatted text, which means they’re memory-efficient and compatible with just about any application or system in the world.

Limitations of CSV

The benefits of using CSV turn into limitations when we want to represent our tabular plain-text data in more visually appealing ways. Converting to Excel XLSX or ODS (open document spreadsheet) formats can solve this problem, but these formats also increase the size of our files significantly, and they both eventually require conversion to a standard presentation format (e.g., PDF or HTML) before they can be displayed effectively outside their respective applications.

If we convert our CSV data sets directly to HTML, however, we can retain many of the advantages we got from using CSV in the first place - namely lightweight, plain text data representation - and also create appealing visual representations of that data in web browser displays using advanced HTML5/CSS features.

Tutorial: Convert CSV to HTML in Python

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to convert our CSV data to HTML format in Python using a web API. With our data represented in HTML format, we’ll be able to easily format our data sets in visually appealing ways on the web without relying on spreadsheet applications.

Step 1: Install the Cloudmersive Convert API Client

To begin, we’ll first install the client SDK using the following pip install command:

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Step 2: Add the Imports

We’ll next copy the below imports and add them at the top of our controller:

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_convert_api_client
from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint

Step 3: Configure an API Key

We’ll now handle authorization for our API call. We’ll need a free API key to make our CSV to HTML conversions, and we can get one by creating a free account on the Cloudmersive website. A free API key will give us a limit of 800 API calls per month with zero additional commitments (we can scale up our plan if/when the need arises).

We’ll use the following configuration snippet to capture our API key string:

# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

Step 4: Create an Instance of the CSV to HTML API

We’ll wrap up our process by instancing the API and calling the conversion function. We’ll specify our CSV file for each conversion using the file path:

# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ConvertDocumentApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
input_file = '/path/to/inputfile' # file | Input file to perform the operation on.

try:
    # Convert CSV to HTML document
    api_response = api_instance.convert_document_csv_to_html(input_file)
    pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
    print("Exception when calling ConvertDocumentApi->convert_document_csv_to_html: %s\n" % e)

And that’s all there is to it - no more code required!

We can now easily format and manipulate our data using advanced HTML5/CSS features before we display that data on the web.

We’ll have plenty more articles focused on making common data format conversions in the coming weeks - so stay tuned! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog to get our tutorials directly in your inbox each week.