Automating Tasks with Python Scripts

Today's world is motivated by technological advancement, making automation techniques the best option to increase efficiency while minimizing the amount of human labor involved in carrying out redundant tasks. Python scripts offer one of the simplest yet most effective methods of automating procedures. Being a multipurpose immersed language with numerous libraries, Python is, in particular, tackling automation projects. Using Python scripts, one can automate anything from routine management tasks to sophisticated data analytics.

This post is about automating tasks using simple scripts. I will cover what automation is, how we can do it with Python and what are the tasks that can be done using Python.

What is meant by Task Automation?

Task automation is a technology that is used to execute tasks without human intervention. It eliminates the need to manually perform recurring tasks and implements an automated process for completing the steps using software. In other words, with programming languages such as Python, task automation means the creation of scripts that instruct a computer to perform a certain task or an entire series of tasks more effectively and faster than it could be done by hand.

Numerous work activities can be automated. These include:

- Data Processing : The automation of extracting data and working with data as well as analyzing data.

- File Management : The action of moving, renaming, or otherwise altering files and their organization is done automatically.

- Web Scraping : The use of the computer to gather data from websites.

- Email Sending : Sending email reminders, notifications, or any marketing related emails automatically.

Python as a Means for Automating Tasks

Automating tasks is made easier with Python for many reasons. To begin with, it is a relatively straightforward language to master, even for a novice. The language has a quite consistent and easy to comprehend syntax, hence scripts can be quickly written and understood. There are numerous libraries created for the language, many of which are focused on executing tasks which require automation.

For example, there are some libraries like os , shutil , smtplib , and schedule that are meant to send emails, schedule tasks, interact with the Operating System, and handle files. Combining these libraries with the ones natively available in Python gives rise to very effective automation scripts.

Composing a Simple Python Script

Starting with approaching task execution automation, Python users have to start from grasping the core nature of a Python file, also known as a script. Scripts are files which contain a sequence of Python commands. Here is how a Python file is structured:

1. Import Libraries : The very start of Python scripts is denoted by importing required libraries or modules, e.g., when intending to perform file interaction, you can call for this library 'os' .

2. Define Functions : Functions help in packaging the set of instructions into a recomposing building block. Doing this while automating certain activities gives you the ability to perform that operation at any time.

3. Main Script Logic : This part implements the specific automation logic. In most cases, it consists of input, calculations and file read/write actions.

4. Running the Script : As soon as the script is complete it may be executed from the command prompt or the development environment. After this, the actions defined are performed without the need of any manual instructions.

Automating File Handling and File Management

Even files are handled by Python scripts. Most people have to do several file-related jobs such as renaming files, moving them into various folders and deleting some files, over and over again. Python may be useful in streamlining such tasks.

For example, file renaming, moving, copying and deletion can be done with the help of Libraries of python the os and shutil . Here is an example:

File Handling Example

  import os
 
import shutil
 

 
# Renaming a file
 
os.rename('old_file.txt', 'new_file.txt')
 

 
# Moving a file to another directory
 
shutil.move('new_file.txt', '/path/to/destination/')
In this example:

- os.rename() is used to rename a file, for instance change its name from 'whatever' to 'whatsoever'.

- shutil.move() moves the file to a new website address that has been provided.

When Python is given instruction to do all these simple tasks, so many hours of time can be saved that could have been utilized in elaborate file handling techniques which include sorting, deleting and moving files from one directory to another: particularly if it's a bulk of files.

Automating Email Sending

Another common task that can be simplified and accomplished using Python includes sending emails. There are so many situations where email sending is a need. For example news letters, notification emails, and even reminder emails that are usually needed by businesses and people. This can be done using the 'smtplib' library of python.

This script:

- Sends an email via SMTP server, using smtplib for the connection.

- Composes an email consisting of subject and message through email.mime.text.MIMEText .


Let's take a look at the code first for an example of how to send an email using Python:

Email Sending Example

  import smtplib
 
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
 

 
# First, prepare your email
 
subject = "Meeting tomorrow"
 
body = "This is an email used to notify the recipient about a meeting scheduled for 10:00 AM tomorrow."
 
msg = MimeText(body)
 
msg['Subject'] = subject
 
msg['From'] = 'your input email'
 
msg['To'] = 'person to send an email'
 

 
# Then, configure your SMTP server settings and send the letter.
 
server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.example.com', 587)
 
server.starttls()
 
server.login('your email', your_password)
 
server.sendmail('your email', 'person to send an email', messagedata)
 
server.quit()
 

 
# Send the email to the recipient.
This is a good practice for doing such common tasks as sending an email and allows you to automate tasks such as sending them on a daily basis, thus eliminating the effort it takes to send them out manually.

Automating Web Scraping

Putting it simply, web scraping is searching for specific data contained in different websites, this is another application where Python shines. By using some modules, such as BeautifulSoup and requests , you could scrape data from any site and save it in a well-defined structure such as CSV or JSON.

You can create a Python script that would extract product prices from an e-shop and compare them over the years. First of all such development would depend on the structure of the targeted websites, but in general steps, one would do the following:

- Use HTTP requests to navigate to the desired page.

- Use parsers to scrape off the pertinent information needed.

- Organize information through writing into a file or any relevant database.

Due to its effective nature, web scraping can be utilized for various purposes ranging from data mining to marketing and even competitor research.

Executing Tasks Automatically Using Scheduling

In some cases there can be tasks that need to be performed automatically like, for example, scheduled backups, database updates, or generating reports. Python code for this purpose would be run every so often using the schedule library.

For example, you may have wanted to set up a script that would check for new emails every hour or would create file backups everyday. This can be applied through the use of the schedule library as shown in the following basic example:

Scheduling Example

  import schedule
 
import time
 

 
def task():
 
    print("Running task...")
 

 
# Schedule the task to run every 5 seconds
 
schedule.every(5).seconds.do(task)
 

 
while True:
 
    schedule.run_pending()
 
    time.sleep(1)
This means that the task() function will be invoked 5-second intervals. The schedule.run_pending() function simply checks if a task is pending and its time has come, then it runs that task.

This inbuilt includes argument scheduling, allows to set future calls of specified python scripts for certain time or days thus when the time comes there would be no need of manually running the script because it is already coded to run automatically.