vsbabu.org : python http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/categories/python/ Gluing passing thoughts to foregone conclusions en-us vsbabu@gmail.com Copyright 2009 2009-08-26T13:15:59+05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 India PyCon 2009 http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2009/08/26/india_pycon_2009.html PyCon in Bangalore 1049@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ pyconin2009.gif Got an email from one of my fellow REC/NIT guys. PyCon 2009 India is underway next month. IISc is a must-visit place for any Engineer in India, in my opinion. Pythonistas who are not in India - here is your chance to couple tourism with Python :-)

I've some outstation trips planned during this time frame - if that doesn't happen, I am going to be there.

]]> python 2009-08-26T13:15:59+05:00 Quick wallpaper changer http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2009/08/24/quick_wallpaper_changer.html Silly python. Change wallpaper. 1047@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ There are a whole bunch of fancy wallpaper changers for WindowsTM out there. Most of them run in the background - and I am wary of background processes. Since I use bblean, and bblean (or equivalently, blackbox/fluxbox etc on Linux) comes with utilities like bsetroot that can set the wallpaper; it was a simple matter to whip up a silly Python script that picks up a random image file from a directory and call bsetroot. Put this as a WindowsTM scheduled task to run every 10 minutes or so.

Don't you love Python's list functions?

]]> python 2009-08-24T19:31:38+05:00 Load testing with Grinder http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2009/08/24/load_testing_with_grinder.html Been playing with Grinder. Very nice. 1046@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ Grinder rocks. Made it so easy to setup load testing framework for Web Applications. While it certainly helped that I had worked with Python before, it took hardly 2-3 days to:

  • understand the framework (could've been faster, if I had RTFM)
  • write my own scripts
  • understand how the recorded scripts are structured
  • extract relevant parts from recorded scripts to my test scripts
  • train couple of folks on how to do this on their own
  • and test our application's UI
]]> python 2009-08-24T09:00:31+05:00 Adding namespace to XML http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2009/08/23/adding_namespace_to_xml.html Regex on XML to add a namespace 1045@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ InfoPath expects a namespace to be defined in the XML. In case you've done custom web services that don't have the heavy payload of SOAP, you might've skipped on namespace too. I ran into this issue recently - it is easy enough to front end your web service with a small regex script that attaches a namespace. Here is a small python regex snippet that adds a namespace named my: to an XML.

]]> python 2009-08-23T14:04:16+05:00 Opera RSS to OPML http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2005/07/03/opera_rss_to_opml.html Small Python script to generate OPML from Opera's RSS feed list. 1008@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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.

]]> python 2005-07-03T21:18:36+05:00 Soup is beautiful http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2005/03/23/soup_is_beautiful.html Came across BeautifulSoup yesterday. Very nice! 999@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ BeautifulSoup is a great Python module that lets you parse HTML and XML documents very easily. Via BangPypers meeting note.

]]> python 2005-03-23T12:26:37+05:00 Using Leo with reST http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2005/01/22/using_leo_with_rest.html Follow up on the older entry; things have changed with Leo 4.2 final. 996@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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.

]]> python 2005-01-22T10:32:35+05:00 Jython is great http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2004/02/24/jython_is_great.html Long overdue note on the ease and elegance of Jython. 981@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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:

  1. Making quick test scripts to integrate different Java components.
  2. Adding such scripts write into an Ant task.
  3. 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.

]]> python 2004-02-24T12:13:48+05:00 Quick UI for DocIndexer http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2003/12/23/quick_ui_for_docindexer.html Simple UI for a great utility that _just works_ using LuPy. 954@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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.

]]> python 2003-12-23T12:47:27+05:00 Scrape 'em! http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2003/10/23/scrape_em.html One of those moments where "scripting" is better than compiled languages:-) 926@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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.

]]> python 2003-10-23T13:02:46+05:00 Regex HTML extraction examples http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2003/09/18/regex_html_extraction_examples.html Couple of examples to parse web pages with news items. 893@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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)

]]> python 2003-09-18T09:08:38+05:00 Interactive Python - notes http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2003/09/16/interactive_python_notes.html Additional notes on what I like about Python's interactive interpreter. 891@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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.

]]> python 2003-09-16T06:21:04+05:00 Jython zxJDBC rocks! http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2003/09/15/jython_zxjdbc_rocks.html Jython with zxJDBC makes life so much easier for data maintenance scripts. 890@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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.

]]> python 2003-09-15T18:05:12+05:00 Updates to feeds http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2003/09/14/updates_to_feeds.html Feed on feeds get categorization and opml. 888@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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 2003-09-14T11:17:39+05:00 Python 2.3 http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2003/09/12/python_23.html What's new in Python 2.3? Coverage in Byte.com. 885@http://vsbabu.org/mt/ 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 2003-09-12T11:37:47+05:00