CSV email script efficiency

Question

I'm tasked with getting emails from a .csv file and using them to submit a form. I am using the csv and mechanize Python libraries to achieve this.

import re
import mechanize
import csv
def auto_email(email):
 br = mechanize.Browser()
 br.open("URL")
 br.select_form(name="vote_session")
 br['email_add'] = '%s' % (email) #email address
 br.submit()
def csv_emails():
 ifile = open('emails.csv', "rb") 
 reader = csv.reader(ifile)
 rownum = 1
 for row in reader:
 auto_email(row[0])
 print "%d - %s processed" %(rownum, row[0])
 rownum += 1
 print 'List processed. You are done.'
 ifile.close()
print csv_emails()

The code works, but I am very much a beginner in Python.

I was wondering whether I have any inefficiencies that you can help me get rid of and optimize the script?

Answer 1

I would suggest to use

with open('emails.csv', "rb") as ifile

see here for details: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0343/ in this case you don't need to do ifile.close at the end

instead of incrementing rownum by yourself, you can use

for row, rownum in enumerate(reader):

I don't see the reason to do this

br['email_add'] = '%s' % (email) #email address

instead of

br['email_add'] = email

• Gareth Rees: email comes from a row returned by csv.reader so it's always a string.
• RomanI: so in this case br['email_add'] = email is enough. I edited my answer

Answer 2

print csv_emails() doesn't make sense. Since csv_emails() returns no value, there is nothing to print.