#100DaysOfCode in Python Transcripts
Chapter: Days 52-54: Parsing RSS feeds with Feedparser
Lecture: Concepts: what did we learn
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And that's it, I told you it was simple.
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So Feedparser is awesome.
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A very, very simple and small lightweight thing to use
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but really helps you out if you want to automate things
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like feeds.
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So, let's just recap quickly what we did without going
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into too much detail.
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We import requests and this is for pulling down
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the XML feed.
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Okay.
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Specify the feed that we want to pull down, okay.
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We actually get the feed using that URL
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and we store it in r.
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Okay.
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We then open a file, you can call this whatever you want,
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and then we write the contents of that XML file,
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that feed, into
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the file that you specified there, okay.
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Simple.
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And now, onto the Feedparser stuff.
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So obviously the first thing we do
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is import feedparser.
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Okay.
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Then we specify that actual file that we created
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in the last step.
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Okay, remember we separated these two processes of pulling
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the file and then parsing it just in case you had
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a scenario where, let's say you couldn't pull the file.
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Well, if you couldn't pull it, at least you have
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an existing file and you can continue parsing that.
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The whole thing doesn't fall over, alright.
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Now we parse it using feedparser.parse and throw that
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into the feed, all right.
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And then we have the little sanity check there to make
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sure the feed is okay to parse,
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that it has that title tag that we want
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and that we did necessary again.
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You can wrap some sort of a try except or whatever
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you know, error checking you want around that.
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Then for every entry within that feed we're going to take
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the data stored against publish in the publish tag,
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in the title tag and the link tag and then we're going to
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print that in a nice little string
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and that's it, okay.
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Now, very exciting.
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It's your turn.
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So for the next day I would like you,
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instead of printing out that data,
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so in the previous step you saw we printed out
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the publish, the title and the link.
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Instead of printing it out,
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why not do something interesting with it?
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What can you think that you might be able to do with it?
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So just some ideas, maybe you could e-mail that data
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which is exactly what I'm doing with this steam stuff.
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That's the script I'm running.
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You could e-mail that to yourself.
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You could potentially store it in a database.
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There's a nice little challenge for you.
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You figure out a way to store that data in a database.
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Or you could just think of something else.
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Anything you can think of, any other libraries that
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you could use to do something interesting with that.
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Come up with it, try your own feed and have fun with it
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and go parse those feeds.