Improving Record Counting by Month

Your current approach works well for basic counting, but here are some improvements and alternatives:

1. Using collections.Counter

The Counter class from the collections module is perfect for this task:

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import requests
from collections import Counter

response = requests.get('https://api.example.com/records')
records = response.json()

def count_records_per_month(records):
    return Counter(record['created_at'][:7] for record in records)

monthly_counts = count_records_per_month(records)
print(monthly_counts)

2. Using defaultdict

Another clean approach using defaultdict:

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import requests
from collections import defaultdict

response = requests.get('https://api.example.com/records')
records = response.json()

def count_records_per_month(records):
    counts = defaultdict(int)
    for record in records:
        month = record['created_at'][:7]
        counts[month] += 1
    return dict(counts)

monthly_counts = count_records_per_month(records)
print(monthly_counts)

3. Using datetime for more robust date handling

If your dates might be in different formats:

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import requests
from collections import Counter
from datetime import datetime

response = requests.get('https://api.example.com/records')
records = response.json()

def count_records_per_month(records):
    months = []
    for record in records:
        date = datetime.fromisoformat(record['created_at'].replace('Z', '+00:00'))
        month_str = date.strftime('%Y-%m')
        months.append(month_str)
    return Counter(months)

monthly_counts = count_records_per_month(records)
print(monthly_counts)

4. Using pandas for advanced analysis

If you need more advanced analysis or visualization:

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import requests
import pandas as pd

response = requests.get('https://api.example.com/records')
records = response.json()

def analyze_records_by_month(records):
    df = pd.DataFrame(records)
    df['created_at'] = pd.to_datetime(df['created_at'])
    df['month'] = df['created_at'].dt.strftime('%Y-%m')
    monthly_counts = df['month'].value_counts().sort_index()
    return monthly_counts

monthly_counts = analyze_records_by_month(records)
print(monthly_counts)

Each approach has its advantages depending on your specific needs for performance, readability, or additional analysis requirements.