HeaderIndexer

A system to bind aliases to indexes of headers in a matrix.

Given a dict of header aliases paired to the actual header value (or an iterable of possible values) creates a dict with entries {'alias': column_index}

Includes interactive prompts to manually select headers when unable to find, and optional duplicate checks for aliases sharing indexes

Installation

pip install headerindexer

Using HeaderIndexer

from headerindexer import HI
indexer = HI()
headers = ["Date", "OS", "TrackingID", "DNSHostname", b"DNSHostname", 77]
aliases = {
   b'hostname':     ["DNSHostname", b'DNSHostname'],
   "track":        ("1TrackingID1", 'TrackingID'),
   "OS":           "OperatingSystem",
   7:              77
}
aliases_to_indexes = indexer.run(headers, aliases)

Assume we've extracted a row of headers from a spreadsheet. Create a dictionary like aliases, and pass them both to indexer (HI.run())

# aliases_to_indexes, generated above
{b'hostname': 3, 'track': 2, 'OS': 1, 7: 5}

The returned dictionary can be used to reliably call on the appropriate column by given aliases

Headers not found/Duplicates headers

By default, when an alias' header cannot be located headerindexer will prompt the user to manually select from a list of all headers, one by one

Additionally HI.allow_duplicates can be set to False in or after init, enabling a similar mode of prompting whenever two or more aliases share the same index value