Building a CKAN Release Timeline

import csv
import markdown
 
# Generate a list from a file for importing into a CSV
def extract_data(file_path):
    # Open the .rst file
    with open(file_path, 'r') as file:
        # Generate a string list of each line from the .rst file
        lines = file.readlines()
 
    # List of each release's data to import into CSV
    data = []
    # Row values for each column in the CSV
    year = ''
    month = ''
    day = ''
    headline = ''
    text = ''
 
    # Loop through each line in the .rst file
    for line in lines:
        # Remove starting and ending whitespaces (if any)
        line = line.strip()
 
        # Line starts with v or v. followed by a number (v2 or v.2)
        if (line.startswith('v') and line[1].isdigit()) or (line.startswith('v.') and line[2].isdigit()):
            # Append the accumulated data for the previous version to the list
            data.append([year, month, day, headline, text])
            # Reset the text for writing the current version's changes
            text = ''
            # Extract the release version and date information
            headline = line.split()[0]
            datetime = line.split()[1]
            year, month, day = datetime.split('-')
        # Ignore lines starting with '=' (section headers)
        elif line.startswith('='):
            continue
        # Accumulate the lines between release versions into the text variable
        else:
            # Convert the current line to HTML
            text += markdown.markdown(line) + '\n'
 
    # Append the last release version's data to the data list
    data.append([year, month, day, headline, text])
 
    return data
 
# Write the extracted release data to a CSV file
def write_to_csv(data, output_file):
    # Create or overwrite a CSV file
    with open(output_file, 'w', newline='') as file:
        # Instantiate a CSV file writer object
        writer = csv.writer(file)
        # Write the header row in the same format as the Google Sheet
        writer.writerow(['Year', 'Month', 'Day', 'Headline', 'Text'])
 
        # Write each release to the CSV file as a row
        for row in data:
            writer.writerow(row)
 
# Example usage
file_path = 'CHANGELOG.rst'
output_file = 'output.csv'
 
# Extract data from the .rst file
file_data = extract_data(file_path)
# Write the data to a .csv file
write_to_csv(file_data, output_file)