Python information and short questions megathread.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Python information and short questions megathread.

FrontLine: Sep 17, 2003; I gave Mr. Adequate hot, steamy man love and all he bought me was a custom title!

I wrote this short program as a cheap excuse to mess around with Python a bit more (only started learning about a week ago) and to screw around with VIM. Just wondering if there's any stupid newbie mistakes I've made or things I should watch out for. Considering it's pretty short I think I'm safe but just to be sure...

code:

#!/usr/bin/python
# Basic python program that will download a user specified number of images from WaffleImages.
# Please be warned that some of the images you may get back from WaffleImages could be NWS. This is unavoidable.

# Imports blah blah
import urllib
import urllib2
import os

# These headers may be redundant but it's what your browser sends when it makes a request so I've included it here just in case.
headers = {'Referer' : 'http://waffleimages.com/random', 'Cookie' : 'tg-visit=7e8303b895110be9868e2af52424643bcaa92c87;' + 
		'__utma=104184454.1558119543.1203770220.1203770220.1203770220.1; __utmb=104184454; __utmc=104184454; __' + 
		'utmz=104184454.1203770220.1.1.utmccn=(organic)|utmcsr=google|utmctr=waffle+images|utmcmd=organic'}

# This block specifys what data will be used when we send our GET to WaffleImages asking for a random image.
randomURL = 'http://waffleimages.com/random'
randomOpener = urllib2.build_opener()
randomRequest = urllib2.Request(randomURL, "", headers)

# Ask the user how many images they want.
iteration = raw_input('How many images do you want to download? ')

# Self explanatory.
print "Downloading... Please wait..."

# This is the work horse for the program and where I'm sure improvements can be made. 
# The loop runs the amount of times the user specified. It sends a GET to WaffleImages asking for a random image to be sent back.
# WaffleImages returns a web page with the location of the random image within. The program hunts down the link, currently located between
# characters 516 - 556 and requests that. The file is then saved as a .jpg. 
for i in xrange(int(iteration)):
	randomWriter = randomOpener.open(randomRequest).read()
	imageURL = 'http://img.waffleimages.com/' + str(randomWriter)[516:556]
	urllib.urlretrieve(imageURL, str(randomWriter)[516:556] + ".jpg")

print "Finished!"

# Things to be improved:
#	- A way of telling the user which file is being downloaded and how many there are left to download.
#	- A better way of finding the image URL. The current method will be prone to breaking if the html is changed by even a single character.
# Any suggestions are very much welcomed.

edit: Apologies for the heavy commenting. I just wanted to make sure what I was trying to do was obvious.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2008 15:17

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 15:58

FrontLine: Sep 17, 2003; I gave Mr. Adequate hot, steamy man love and all he bought me was a custom title!

Wedge of Lime posted:

After a quick once over (I've not tested the program) the first thing I noticed was the lack of input validation.

For example, when asked how many images I want to download I type 'five.' what happens?

I've thrown this bit in. Effective?

code:

while True:
	iteration = raw_input('How many images do you want to download? ')
	try:
		checkInt = str(int(iteration))
		break
	except:
		print "Invalid input"

# ¿ Feb 24, 2008 01:29

FrontLine: Sep 17, 2003; I gave Mr. Adequate hot, steamy man love and all he bought me was a custom title!

Milde posted:

Don't do "except:", that swallows all exceptions. And I'm not sure why you need to turn it back into a string. And the convention for naming non-class variables in Python is lowercase_with_underscores:
code:
while True:
    image_count = raw_input('Blah blah blah ')
    try:
        image_count = int(image_count)
        break
    except ValueError:
        print 'Whoa man, not cool.'

Thanks for the info

The example I found for checking for the int turned it into a string so I didn't think much of it. I also didn't know about python naming conventions, much appreciated

# ¿ Feb 24, 2008 03:20

FrontLine: Sep 17, 2003; I gave Mr. Adequate hot, steamy man love and all he bought me was a custom title!

Does anybody know how/where to get the Python language pack for VS2005?

# ¿ Mar 6, 2008 09:41

FrontLine: Sep 17, 2003; I gave Mr. Adequate hot, steamy man love and all he bought me was a custom title!

deimos posted:

AFAIK you can't integrate it, instead you get to use: IronPython Studio

Shock and awe!

Wikipedia lied to me.

Wikipedia, the lying encyclopedia posted:

Support for other languages such as F#, Python, and Ruby among others has been made available via language services which are to be installed separately.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2008 23:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Python information and short questions megathread.