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Groovy and Python for Quick Scripting Wins

I recently had a need to convert a PDF file into a Base64-encoded string, quickly — as in, within the next few minutes.

I had recently been writing some scripts in Python, both to accomplish some actual work, and to teach myself Python. I like a lot about Python, and the "batteries included" nature of its standard library makes it great for scripting.

So I launched TextMate, started typing a script, and, after a few quick Google searches, whipped this up:

import binascii

sourceFile = open('documents.pdf')
targetFile = open('output.txt', 'w')         

targetFile.write(binascii.b2a_base64(sourceFile.read()))

That worked out really well. A couple of lines of code, a few quick searches, and after a few minutes, I'm done. Nice!

The next day, it occurred to me that I probably could have just as easily accomplished my task with Groovy, another one of my favorite languages/platforms. Like Python, Groovy is intended to support scripting and application development equally well, so its out-of-the-box capabilities are quite extensive.

Another couple of quick Google searches, a new TextMate window, and I had a Groovy script which does the same exact thing as the Python script:

sourceFile = new File("documents.pdf")
targetFile = new File("output.txt")

targetFile.write(sourceFile.readBytes().encodeBase64().toString())

Some observations:

• The Groovy version is a little higher-level than the Python code. I kinda like that, particularly for scripting.
• The Groovy version needs one less line — no need to import anything. That's nice, but no big deal.
• Both scripts could have done the work with a single line, instead of creating the variables sourceFile and targetFile. But I think using those variables made it easier to write the scripts, and make them easier to read as well.

And that's it for today, I hope this might have been of some value to readers interested in Python, Groovy, or scripting.

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python -c "import binascii;open('output.txt', 'w').write(binascii.b2a_base64(open('documents.pdf').read()))"

groovy -e 'new File("output.txt").write(new File("documents.pdf").readBytes().encodeBase64().toString())'

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