Parsing CSV data from the web.

parse_url.py

import urllib.request
import ssl

# Required because the Census website
ssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context
# If you follow the instructions on this Stackoverflow page, you should be able to omit the line above.
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35569042/ssl-certificate-verify-failed-with-python3/43855394#43855394
#
# Go to the folder where Python is installed, e.g., in my case it is installed in the Applications folder with the
# folder name 'Python 3.6'. Now double click on 'Install Certificates.command'. After that error was gone.


# Read data from the URL
url = 'https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/datasets/2010-2014/state/asrh/scprc-est2014-18+pop-res.csv'
content = urllib.request.urlopen(url)

# Go line by line through the data, which is represented as "byte strings" until
# we tell the computer how to decode it.  We'll decode it as 'utf-8' data (8-bit
# UNICODE).  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
for byte_line in content:

    # Get one line of the CSV file, convert it to a string, and remove the newline.
    text_line = byte_line.decode('utf-8').rstrip()

    # Split into tokens
    tokens = text_line.split(',')

    # Print tokens with tabs as separators, using ljust to pad strings with spaces.
    for i in range(len(tokens)):
        print(tokens[i].ljust(10)+'\t', end='')

    # Add a newline at the end of the line.
    print()