A simple log that tracks hours worked and and a python script that calculates wages

Question

I wrote a simple Python script that will calculate income for a given month and hourly wage by parsing the contents of a log file. The instructions for how to use it is in my GitHub account here. The script is used in the command line with the following command

python calculate_hours.py MY_LOG.txt MONTH YEAR HOURLY_WAGE

• MY_LOG.txt is the text file containing the date and the number of hours worked on that day
• MONTH and YEAR are the full (not abbreviated) month and year for which you'd like the income calculated (e.g. December 2015)
• HOURLY_WAGE is, well, your hourly wage (e.g. 25)

The log file must be formatted in a specific way. An entry in the log should look like the following

**Date**: 21 December 2015
**Time**: 5pm - 7pm, 12-1am
**Hours**: 2, 1
**Notes**:
+ Debugged script written yesterday
+ Checked data 

The script depends on the information after **Date** and **Hours** to calculate income.

It's very simple and I was wondering if there was a way to improve it. The script looks for patterns in the log file to get the date and the hours worked.

import re
import argparse
def wage_calculator(log_txt_file, month, year, wage):
 date_pattern = "\*\*Date\*\*" # pattern identifying the date in the file
 hours_full = []
 with log_txt_file as f:
 for line in log_txt_file:
 if re.search(r"{0}".format(date_pattern), line): # go to the relevant line
 if re.search(month, line) and re.search(str(year), line): # within line, go to desired month/year
 # skips two lines to the line containing the number of hours worked
 f.next()
 hours_line = f.next()
 hours_list_str = re.findall(r'[-+]?\d*\.*\d+', hours_line) # put hours in a list
 hours_list = [float(x) for x in hours_list_str]
 hours_full += hours_list
 sum_hours_date = sum(hours_list)
 print line.rstrip()
 print "Hours logged: " + str(hours_list)
 print "Total hours for the day " + str(sum_hours_date) + "\n"
 hours_total = sum(hours_full)
 print "Total hours worked in {0} {1} is {2}".format(month, year,
 hours_total)
 print "At ${0}/hr, your total wage for {1} {2} is ${3}".format(wage, month
 , year, hours_total * wage)
def main():
 parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
 parser.add_argument("file",
 help="Text file containing hours logged (e.g. ra_hours.txt)",
 type=argparse.FileType('r')
 )
 parser.add_argument("month",
 help="The month for which we want the income",
 type=str)
 parser.add_argument("year",
 help="Enter year",
 type=int)
 parser.add_argument("wage",
 help="Enter hourly wage",
 type=float)
 args = parser.parse_args()
 wage_calculator(args.file, args.month, args.year, args.wage)
if __name__ == '__main__':
 main()

• Tersosauros: Please include (at least some) instructions on how to use the code in your question. A very important part of the StackExchange idea is that questions are (predominantly) self-contained.

Answer 1

I think regex is a bit much for this scale of project. I decided to try rewriting your function without using regex, and I think the result is much cleaner and more Pythonic.

In addition, I replaced your hours_full list of lists with a single number that tracks the total. This greatly simplifies the code.

However, the general structure is essentially the same.

def wage_calculator(log_txt_file, month, year, wage):
 date_pattern = "**Date**: " # pattern identifying the date in the file
 hours_pattern = "**Hours**: " # pattern identifying the hours in the file
 hours_total = 0.0
 with log_txt_file as f:
 for line in log_txt_file:
 if line.startswith(date_pattern):
 if month in line and str(year) in line:
 f.next() # skip a line
 # skip the start of the line to just get a list of hours
 hours_line = f.next()[len(hours_pattern):]
 hours = sum(map(float, hours_line.split(', ')))
 hours_total += hours
 print line.rstrip()
 print "Hours logged: " + hours_line
 print "Total hours for the day " + str(hours) + "\n"
 print "Total hours worked in {0} {1} is {2}".format(month, year,
 hours_total)
 print "At ${0}/hr, your total wage for {1} {2} is ${3}".format(wage, month
 , year, hours_total * wage)

Beyond this, I would look into more error handling and data cleanup. For example, verify that the **Hours** line matches the **Time** line.

Also a .txt doesn't seem suitable for this data, maybe use a .csv?