ENH: Make ExcelWriter & ExcelFile contextmanagers

doc/source/io.rst

@@ -1672,14 +1672,13 @@ The Panel class also has a ``to_excel`` instance method,
 which writes each DataFrame in the Panel to a separate sheet.
 
 In order to write separate DataFrames to separate sheets in a single Excel file,
-one can use the ExcelWriter class, as in the following example:
+one can pass an :class:`~pandas.io.excel.ExcelWriter`.
 
 .. code-block:: python
 
-   writer = ExcelWriter('path_to_file.xlsx')
-   df1.to_excel(writer, sheet_name='Sheet1')
-   df2.to_excel(writer, sheet_name='Sheet2')
-   writer.save()
+   with ExcelWriter('path_to_file.xlsx') as writer:
+       df1.to_excel(writer, sheet_name='Sheet1')
+       df2.to_excel(writer, sheet_name='Sheet2')
 
 .. _io.excel.writers:
 
@@ -1693,14 +1692,13 @@ Excel writer engines
 1. the ``engine`` keyword argument
 2. the filename extension (via the default specified in config options)
 
-By default ``pandas`` only supports
-`openpyxl <http://packages.python.org/openpyxl/>`__ as a writer for ``.xlsx``
-and ``.xlsm`` files and `xlwt <http://www.python-excel.org/>`__ as a writer for
-``.xls`` files.  If you have multiple engines installed, you can change the
-default engine via the ``io.excel.xlsx.writer`` and ``io.excel.xls.writer``
-options.
+By default, ``pandas`` uses  `openpyxl <http://packages.python.org/openpyxl/>`__
+for ``.xlsx`` and ``.xlsm`` files and `xlwt <http://www.python-excel.org/>`__
+for ``.xls`` files.  If you have multiple engines installed, you can set the
+default engine through :ref:`setting the config options <basics.working_with_options>`
+``io.excel.xlsx.writer`` and ``io.excel.xls.writer``.
 
-For example if the optional `XlsxWriter <http://xlsxwriter.readthedocs.org>`__
+For example if the `XlsxWriter <http://xlsxwriter.readthedocs.org>`__
 module is installed you can use it as a xlsx writer engine as follows:
 
 .. code-block:: python
@@ -1712,8 +1710,8 @@ module is installed you can use it as a xlsx writer engine as follows:
    writer = ExcelWriter('path_to_file.xlsx', engine='xlsxwriter')
 
    # Or via pandas configuration.
-   from pandas import set_option
-   set_option('io.excel.xlsx.writer', 'xlsxwriter')
+   from pandas import options
+   options.io.excel.xlsx.writer = 'xlsxwriter'
 
    df.to_excel('path_to_file.xlsx', sheet_name='Sheet1')
 

doc/source/release.rst

@@ -126,6 +126,8 @@ Improvements to existing features
   - ``read_json`` now raises a (more informative) ``ValueError`` when the dict
     contains a bad key and ``orient='split'`` (:issue:`4730`, :issue:`4838`)
   - ``read_stata`` now accepts Stata 13 format (:issue:`4291`)
+  - ``ExcelWriter`` and ``ExcelFile`` can be used as contextmanagers.
+    (:issue:`3441`, :issue:`4933`)
 
 API Changes
 ~~~~~~~~~~~

pandas/core/frame.py

@@ -3453,7 +3453,7 @@ def unstack(self, level=-1):
         See also
         --------
         DataFrame.pivot : Pivot a table based on column values.
-        DataFrame.stack : Pivot a level of the column labels (inverse operation 
+        DataFrame.stack : Pivot a level of the column labels (inverse operation
             from `unstack`).
 
         Examples

pandas/io/excel.py

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
 from pandas import json
 from pandas.compat import map, zip, reduce, range, lrange, u, add_metaclass
 from pandas.core import config
-from pandas.core.common import pprint_thing, PandasError
+from pandas.core.common import pprint_thing
 import pandas.compat as compat
 from warnings import warn
 
@@ -260,6 +260,17 @@ def _parse_excel(self, sheetname, header=0, skiprows=None, skip_footer=0,
     def sheet_names(self):
         return self.book.sheet_names()
 
+    def close(self):
+        """close path_or_buf if necessary"""
+        if hasattr(self.path_or_buf, 'close'):
+            self.path_or_buf.close()
+
+    def __enter__(self):
+        return self
+
+    def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback):
+        self.close()
+
 
 def _trim_excel_header(row):
     # trim header row so auto-index inference works
@@ -408,6 +419,17 @@ def check_extension(cls, ext):
         else:
             return True
 
+    # Allow use as a contextmanager
+    def __enter__(self):
+        return self
+
+    def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback):
+        self.close()
+
+    def close(self):
+        """synonym for save, to make it more file-like"""
+        return self.save()
+
 
 class _OpenpyxlWriter(ExcelWriter):
     engine = 'openpyxl'

pandas/io/tests/test_excel.py

@@ -275,6 +275,18 @@ def test_xlsx_table(self):
         tm.assert_frame_equal(df4, df.ix[:-1])
         tm.assert_frame_equal(df4, df5)
 
+    def test_reader_closes_file(self):
+        _skip_if_no_xlrd()
+        _skip_if_no_openpyxl()
+
+        pth = os.path.join(self.dirpath, 'test.xlsx')
+        f = open(pth, 'rb')
+        with ExcelFile(f) as xlsx:
+            # parses okay
+            df = xlsx.parse('Sheet1', index_col=0)
+
+        self.assertTrue(f.closed)
+
 
 class ExcelWriterBase(SharedItems):
     # Base class for test cases to run with different Excel writers.
@@ -310,6 +322,21 @@ def test_excel_sheet_by_name_raise(self):
 
             self.assertRaises(xlrd.XLRDError, xl.parse, '0')
 
+    def test_excelwriter_contextmanager(self):
+        ext = self.ext
+        pth = os.path.join(self.dirpath, 'testit.{0}'.format(ext))
+
+        with ensure_clean(pth) as pth:
+            with ExcelWriter(pth) as writer:
+                self.frame.to_excel(writer, 'Data1')
+                self.frame2.to_excel(writer, 'Data2')
+
+            with ExcelFile(pth) as reader:
+                found_df = reader.parse('Data1')
+                found_df2 = reader.parse('Data2')
+                tm.assert_frame_equal(found_df, self.frame)
+                tm.assert_frame_equal(found_df2, self.frame2)
+
     def test_roundtrip(self):
         _skip_if_no_xlrd()
         ext = self.ext