filename

The DBF file to open.

The file name is case insensitive, which means DBF('PEOPLE.DBF') will open the file people.dbf. If there is a memo file, it too will be looked for in a case insensitive manner, so DBF('PEOPLE.DBF') would find the memo file people.FPT.

DBFNotFound will be raised if the file is not found, and MissingMemoFile if the memo file is missing.

load=False

By default records will streamed directly from disk. If you pass load=True they will instead be loaded into lists and made available as the records and deleted attributes.

You can load and unload records at any time with the load() and unload() methods.

encoding=None

Specify character encoding to use.

By default dbfread will try to guess character encoding from the language_driver byte. If this fails it falls back on ASCII.

char_decode_errors='strict'

The error handling scheme to use for the handling of decoding errors. This is passed as the errors option to the bytes.decode() method. From the documentation of that method:

"The default is 'strict' meaning that decoding errors raise a UnicodeDecodeError. Other possible values are 'ignore' and 'replace' as well as any other name registered with codecs.register_error that can handle UnicodeDecodeErrors."

lowernames=False

Field names are typically uppercase. If you pass True all field names will be converted to lowercase.

recfactory=collections.OrderedDict

Takes a function that will be used to produce new records. The function will be called with a list of (name, value) pairs.

If you pass recfactory=None you will get the original (name, value) list.

ignorecase=True

Windows uses a case preserving file system which means people.dbf and PEOPLE.DBF are the same file. This causes problems in for example Linux where case is significant. To get around this dbfread ignores case in file names. You can turn this off by passing ignorecase=False.

parserclass=FieldParser

The parser to use when parsing field values. You can use this to add new field types or do custom parsing by subclassing dbfread.FieldParser. (See :doc:`field_types`.)

ignore_missing_memofile=False

If you don't have the memo field you can pass ignore_missing_memofile=True. All memo fields will then be returned as None, so you at least get the rest of the data.

raw=False

Returns all data values as byte strings. This can be used for debugging or for doing your own decoding.

load()

Load records into memory. This loads both records and deleted records. The records and deleted attributes will now be lists of records.

unload()

Unload records from memory. The records and deleted attributes will now be instances of RecordIterator, which streams records from disk.

records

If the table is loaded this is a list of records. If not, it's a RecordIterator object. In either case, iterating over it or calling len() on it will give the same results.

deleted

If the table is loaded this is a list of deleted records. If not, it's a RecordIterator object. In either case, iterating over it or calling len() on it will give the same results.

loaded

True if records are loaded into memory.

dbversion

The name of the program that created the database (based on the dbversion byte in the header). Example: "FoxBASE+/Dbase III plus, no memory".

name

Name of the table. This is the lowercased stem of the filename, for example the file /home/me/SHOES.dbf will have the name shoes.

date

Date when the file was last updated (as datetime.date) or None if the date was all zeroes or invalid.

field_names

A list of field names in the order they appear in the file. This can for example be used to produce the header line in a CSV file.

encoding

Character encoding used in the file. This is determined by the language_driver byte in the header, and can be overriden with the encoding keyword argument.

ignorecase, lowernames, recfactory, parserclass, raw

These are set to the values of the same keyword arguments.

filename

File name of the DBF file.

memofilename

File name of the memo file, or None if there is no memo file.

header

The file header. This is only intended for internal use, but is exposed for debugging purposes. Example:

DBFHeader(dbversion=3, year=114, month=8, day=2, numrecords=3,
headerlen=97, recordlen=25, reserved1=0, incomplete_transaction=0,
encryption_flag=0, free_record_thread=0, reserved2=0, reserved3=0,
mdx_flag=0, language_driver=0, reserved4=0)

fields

A list of field headers from the file. Example of a field:

DBFField(name='NAME', type='C', address=1, length=16, decimal_count=0,
reserved1=0, workarea_id=0, reserved2=0, reserved3=0, set_fields_flag=0,
reserved4=b'\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00', index_field_flag=0)

Only the name, type and length attributes are used.