python - Read a zipped file as a pandas DataFrame

Question

I'm trying to unzip a csv file and pass it into pandas so I can work on the file.
The code I have tried so far is:

import requests, zipfile, StringIO
r = requests.get('http://data.octo.dc.gov/feeds/crime_incidents/archive/crime_incidents_2013_CSV.zip')
z = zipfile.ZipFile(StringIO.StringIO(r.content))
crime2013 = pandas.read_csv(z.read('crime_incidents_2013_CSV.csv'))

After the last line, although python is able to get the file, I get a "does not exist" at the end of the error.

Can someone tell me what I'm doing incorrectly?

Answer 1

If you want to read a zipped or a tar.gz file into pandas dataframe, the read_csv methods includes this particular implementation.

df = pd.read_csv('filename.zip')

Or the long form:

df = pd.read_csv('filename.zip', compression='zip', header=0, sep=',', quotechar='"')

Description of the compression argument from the docs:

compression : {‘infer’, ‘gzip’, ‘bz2’, ‘zip’, ‘xz’, None}, default ‘infer’ For on-the-fly decompression of on-disk data. If ‘infer’ and filepath_or_buffer is path-like, then detect compression from the following extensions: ‘.gz’, ‘.bz2’, ‘.zip’, or ‘.xz’ (otherwise no decompression). If using ‘zip’, the ZIP file must contain only one data file to be read in. Set to None for no decompression.

New in version 0.18.1: support for ‘zip’ and ‘xz’ compression.