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So I have this program that I've written in Python 2.7 which takes user input of various employee information and writes it to a file. I put the main block of code into a function, because I want to be able to run it multiple times. The code I currently have is below: 

def employeeInformation():
    # opens text file data will be stored in
    with open('employeeFile.txt', 'w') as dataFile:
        # gets user input for employee name
        employeeName = raw_input('Employee Name: ')
        # checks if the input is a string or not
        if not employeeName.isalpha():
            print('Invalid data entry')
        else:
            # if input is string, write data to file
            dataFile.write(employeeName + '\n')

            # gets user input for employee age
            employeeAge = raw_input('Employee Age: ')
            if not employeeAge.isdigit():
                print('Invalid data entry')
            else:
                # if input is number, write data to file
                dataFile.write(employeeAge + '\n')

                # gets user input for employee role
                employeeRole = raw_input('Employee Role: ')
                if not employeeRole.isalpha():
                    print('Invalid data entry')
                else:
                    # if input is string, write data to file
                    dataFile.write(employeeRole + '\n')

                    employeeSalary = raw_input('Employee Salary: ')
                    if not employeeSalary.isdigit():
                        print('Invalid data entry')
                    else:
                        # if input is number, write data to file
                        dataFile.write(employeeSalary + '\n')
                    dataFile.close()

employeeInformation()
employeeInformation()
employeeInformation()

Whenever it runs however, it only saves on of the function runs in the file, so instead of there being 9 pieces of data in the text file, there are only 3, which are the last 3 I input into the program. I can't figure out why it seems to be overwriting the data each time the function runs, does anyone know whats wrong with this code?

martineau
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Quarismo
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    You need to use the append mode `"a"` and not the write mode `"w"`. Write mode will overwrite any previous contents in your file. – Vasilis G. Dec 07 '17 at 23:18
  • I've changed it round, but now I get the error 'file object has no attribute append' not entirely sure how to fix this. – Quarismo Dec 07 '17 at 23:29
  • You need to read this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1466036/2204131 – ramesh Dec 07 '17 at 23:48

1 Answers1

2

your problem is you are using the 'w' mode of an openfile. just as you can open in mode 'r' for reading a file, you can use 'a' for appending to a file.

just change this line:

with open('employeeFile.txt', 'w') as dataFile:

to 

with open('employeeFile.txt', 'a') as dataFile:

that should solve your problems!

Michael
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