vsbabu.org : python

Opera RSS to OPML

2005-07-03T21:18:36+05:00

I really like Opera 8 quite a lot. It has nice integrated RSS + E-mail + NNTP reader. But one thing I found missing was ability to export my feed list. Since most RSS readers read OPML format these days, here is a Python snippet to help you export Opera feeds settings. I have tested this on my machine and my feeds. Your mileage may vary - feel free to modify this.

Soup is beautiful

2005-03-23T12:26:37+05:00

BeautifulSoup is a great Python module that lets you parse HTML and XML documents very easily. Via BangPypers meeting note.

Using Leo with reST

2005-01-22T10:32:35+05:00

For background infromation for this post, see my original post in 2003. I had to spend some time to get reST going with Leo 4.2. Now there are two plugins for reST., viz., old plugin and a new plugin called rst2 for getting reST formatted documentation for source code.

Here's how you can use old reST plugin to keep your documentation work easy and organized.

Jython is great

2004-02-24T12:13:48+05:00

Jython is a great time saver. It is a small download and installation is a very easy. It actually makes Java a bit more pleasing.

Some quick uses I've found so far include:

Making quick test scripts to integrate different Java components.
Adding such scripts write into an Ant task.
Using the great pprint and dir functions to dive into Java classes and methods much faster than API documentation.

I am sure there are many more ways Jython can be used. For example, I checked in one old script that took about 15 minutes to write -- it provides a rudimentary interactive sql shell. The code couldn't be simpler! A while back, I needed to access an Oracle database. SQL*Plus was not installed in the client machine and the installer was not available either. This script came in handy then.

Quick UI for DocIndexer

2003-12-23T12:47:27+05:00

DocIndexer is a toolkit for indexing and searching document directories. DocIndexer includes command-line utilities, Python file index and search classes plus a Win32 COM server (for scripting from languages such as Visual Basic) which can be used to integrate indexing and searching into application software. The current version has built-in support for Microsoft Word, HTML, RTF, PDF and plain text documents.

Once the indexing is done, the search is very fast. I used it for 2 days and already can't live without it. The search results come up in a DOS window; which makes it difficult to actually pull up documents from the search results (Mark - Copy - Paste).

So, I wrote a quick HTA to act as a front end for docsearch.exe. Obligatory screen shot is below.

Scrape 'em!

2003-10-23T13:02:46+05:00

I wanted to prove a point about the value of less number of lines of code to get something done. I also wanted to prove a point about readability of code too.

Python code is below. Naturally, the other option is to finish up semi-colons, braces and compilation in that other language.

Regex HTML extraction examples

2003-09-18T09:08:38+05:00

Every other week, I find myself facing a job requiring regular expressions. And every other week, I need to refer to python re module and regex howto.

In an effort to reduce that time, here is working code that -- at the moment -- parses National Geographic News and IBM dW home page. Perhaps it might be useful to newbies too. The functions return a list of tuples like (title, url, description, date, category)

Interactive Python - notes

2003-09-16T06:21:04+05:00

Simon Willison has a great example, explaining Python's interactive interpreter. I agree with Simon on how useful it is for rapid application development, by seeing results for each line, right there.

A really great feature is the -i option.

Jython zxJDBC rocks!

2003-09-15T18:05:12+05:00

I usually use cxOracle from Python for accessing Oracle. Today, I tried using Jython. It is as easy as using CPython.

I really liked zxJDBC. Especially the dbexts wrapper - makes it much easier to write portable code by moving DB parameters to a configuration file.

Updates to feeds

2003-09-14T11:17:39+05:00

Spycyroll has been pretty much dead after arrival :-) Today, I got some time to mess with the source to add quick templating using XYAPTU. I need to figure out how to check it in - now, the code is a collection of Python and shell scripts (some things are just too easy in Shell).

Summary of results are below.

Python 2.3

2003-09-12T11:37:47+05:00

I love these new features. Read the full article at Byte.com

Pure Python implementation of strptime()
Better datetime! _print ”%d days between dates” % (date1 - date2).days_
CSV module
Better logging module
A sets module. Wow!
Another great built-in function - _for i, word in enumerate(words):_
Slicing for sequence types get an optional “stride”.

Python is bad

2003-09-08T11:11:53+05:00

I spent more than half an hour trying to debug a problem in a Java code. I was half-asleep, but I couldn't find what was wrong.

Looked at the specs. The implementation is about 100 lines. Kept dreaming about how this would have been about 10 lines of Python code (which is even smaller than the specs).

Java, Python and Russ

2003-07-25T11:51:51+05:00

Russell Beattie notes his thoughts about Python from a Java fan's perspective and concludes against Python. It is a pretty good read. Good luck Russ.

I've slightly different views on this.

Server side python

2003-07-09T11:17:18+05:00

Russell Beattie has a post about the subject. I made a comment on his weblog about that.

For future reference, I'm posting my comment as an entry here too.

Point to ponder: I feel kind of silly posting my comment there as a post here. Feels like duplication (well, it is) and some kind of copyright issue. Zzzz…

A little too simplistic definition

2003-07-07T18:13:14+05:00

I was reading a DevX article titled Build a Reflection-based Interpreter in Java. It has an interesting sidebar, viz., Scripting vs. Programming

The author comes up with a rough conclusion that scripting languages follow quick and dirty programming style, whereas system programming languages follow a thought out programming style.

Give me a break! This prompts me to rant.