# Ignition to read Citect dbf file

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-to-read-citect-dbf-file/79505>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [September 22, 2023, 1:43pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-to-read-citect-dbf-file/79505 "2023-09-22T13:43:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![chaoliang](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ba8739/32.png) [@chaoliang](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/chaoliang)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2023, 7:38am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-to-read-citect-dbf-file/79505/4 "2023-10-01T07:38:52Z")

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I found the following solution works well.

1. Using pycharm or vscode to write and test the script.
2. using dbf module.  
[dbf · PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/dbf/)
3. write and test script to read/write dbf module.
4. using python 3 to call the script from ignition, the script does not work if directly calling from ignition.  
[https://support.inductiveautomation.com/hc/en-us/articles/360056397252-Python-In-Ignition](https://support.inductiveautomation.com/hc/en-us/articles/360056397252-Python-In-Ignition)

refer to the other post for a bit more details about the issue if using ignition directly to call the dbf module.

> [@Issue with Read/Write DBF datafile using dbf module](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/issue-with-read-write-dbf-datafile-using-dbf-module/79722/3):
>
> Spent 2 days troubleshooting the issue and went down to the module details. I found the table write function is not working under ignition, but working using python 3.x. Not sure whether it's the issue with Jython2.7. Anyway, instead of troubleshooting it further, I went alternative way, to call the external python 3 to run the script instead. Issue resolved. Here's the link for calling python3 from ignition.

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