mysterious "'str' object is not callable" python error - python-2.6

Question

I am currently making my first python effort, a modification of some code written by a friend. I am using python 2.6.6. The original piece of code, which works, extracts information from a log file of data from donations made by credit card to my nonprofit. My new version, should it one day work, will perform the same task for donations that were made by paypal. The log files are similar, but have different field names and other differences.
The error messages I'm getting are:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "../logparse-paypal-1.py", line 196, in
convert_log(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2], access_ids)
File "../logparse-paypal-1.py", line 170, in convert_log
output = [f(record, access_ids) for f in output_fns]
TypeError: 'str' object is not callable
I've read some of the posts on this forum related to this error message, but so far I'm still at sea. I can't find any consequential differences between the portions of my code that related to the likely problem object (access_ids) and the code that I started with. All I did related to the access_ids table was to remove some lines that printed problems the script finds with the table that caused it to ignore some data. Perhaps I changed a character or something while doing that, but I've looked and so far can't find anything.
The portion of the code that is producing these error messages is the following:
# Use the output functions configured above to convert the
# transaction record into a list of outputs to be emitted to
# the CSV output file.
print "Converting %s at %s to CSV" % (record["type"], record["time"])
output = [f(record, access_ids) for f in output_fns]
j = 0
while j < len(output):
os.write(csv_fd, output[j])
if j < len(output) - 1:
os.write(csv_fd, ",")
else:
os.write(csv_fd, "\n")
j += 1
convert_count += 1
print "Converted %d approved transactions to CSV format, skipped %d non-approved transactions" % (convert_count, skip_count)
if __name__ == '__main__':
if len(sys.argv) < 3:
print "Usage: logparse.py INPUT_FILE OUTPUT_FILE [ACCESS_IDS_FILE]"
print
print " INPUT_FILE Silent post log containing transaction records (must exist)"
print " OUTPUT_FILE Filename for the CSV file to be created (must not exist, will be created)"
print " ACCESS_IDS_FILE List of Access IDs and email addresses (optional, must exist if specified)"
sys.exit(-1)
access_ids = {}
if len(sys.argv) > 3:
access_ids = load_access_ids(sys.argv[3])
convert_log(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2], access_ids)
Line 170 is this one:
output = [f(record, access_ids) for f in output_fns]
and line 196 is this one:
convert_log(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2], access_ids)
The access_ids definition, possibly related to the problem, is this:
def access_id_fn(record, access_ids):
if "payer_email" in record and len(record["payer_email"]) > 0:
if record["payer_email"] in access_ids:
return '"' + access_ids[record["payer_email"]] + '"'
else:
return ""
else:
return ""
AND
def load_access_ids(filename):
print "Loading Access IDs from %s..." % filename
access_ids = {}
for line in open(filename, "r"):
line = line.rstrip()
access_id, email = [s.strip() for s in line.split(None, 1)]
if not email_address.match(email):
continue
if email in access_ids:
access_ids[string.strip(email)] = string.strip(access_id)
return access_ids
Thanks in advance for any advice with this.
Dave

Answer 1

I'm not seeing anything right off hand, but you did mention that the log files were similar and I take that to mean that there are differences between the two.
Can you post a line from each?
I would double check the data in the log files and make sure what you think is being read in is correct. This definitely appears to me like a piece of data is being read in, but somewhere it is breaking what the code is expecting.