Code Project – Goodreads RSS to HTML (Python)

I already have my Letterboxed watches set up to syndicate here, to this blog, for archival purposes mostly. When I log a movie in Letterboxed, a plug-in catches it from the RSS feed and makes a post. This is done using a plug-in called “RSS Importer” They aren’t the prettiest posts, I may look into adjusting the formatting with some CSS, but they are there. I really want to do the same for my Goodreads reading. Goodreads lists all have an RSS feed, so reason would have it that I could simply, put that feed into RSS Importer and have the same syndication happen.

For some reason, it throws out an error.

The feed shows as valid and even gives me a preview post, but for whatever reason, it won’t create the actual posts. This is probably actually ok, since the Goodreads RSS feed is weird and ugly. I’ll get more into that in a bit.

The Feed URL Is Here, at the bottom of each list.

I decided that I could simply, do it myself, with Python. One thing Python is excellent for is data retrieval and manipulation. I’m already doing something similar with my FreshRSS Syndication posts. I wanted to run through a bit of the process flow here though I used for creating this script. Partially because it might help people who are trying to learn programming and understand a bit more about how creating a program, at least a simple one, actually sort of works.

There were some basic maintenance tasks needing to be done. Firstly, I made sure I had a category on my WordPress site to accept the posts into. I had this already because I needed it trying to get RSS Importer to work. Secondly, I created a new project in PyCharm. Visual Studio Code works as well, any number of IDEs work, I just prefer PyCharm for Python. In my main.py file, I also added some commented-out bit at the header with URLs cut and pasted from Goodreads. I also verified these feeds actually worked with an RSS Reader.

For the actual code there are basically three steps to this process needed:

  • Retrieve the RSS feed
  • Process the RSS Feed
  • Post the processed data.

Part three here, is essentially already done. I can easily lift the code from my FreshRSS poster, replace the actual post data payload, and let it go. I can’t process data at all without data to process, so step one is to get the RSS data. I could probably work it out also from my FreshRSS script, but instead, I decided to just refresh my memory by searching for “Python Get RSS Feed”. Which brings up one of the two core points I want to make here in this post.

Programming is not about knowing all the code.

Programming is more often about knowing what process needs to be done, and knowing where and how to use the code needed. I don’t remember the exact libraries and syntax to get an RSS feed and feed it through Beautiful Soup. I know that I need to get an RSS feed, and I know I need Beautiful Soup.

My search returned this link, which I cribbed some code from, modifying the variables as needed. I basically skimmed through to just before “Outputting to a file”. I don’t need to output to a file, I can just do some print statements during debugging and then later it will all output to WordPress through a constructed string.

I did several runs along the way, finding that I needed to use lxml instead of xml in the features on the Beautiful Soup Call. I also opted to put the feed URL in a variable instead of directly in the code as the original post had it. It’s easy to swap out. I also did some testing by simply printing the output of “books” to make sure I was actually getting useful data, which I was.

At this point, my code looks something like this (not exactly but something like it:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
​
feedurl = "Goodreads URL HERE"
​
def goodreads_rss(feedurl):
   article_list = []    try:
       r = requests.get(feedurl)
       soup = BeautifulSoup(r.content, features='lxml')
       books = soup.findAll('item')                
       for a in books:
           title = a.find('title').text
           link = a.find('link').text
           published = a.find('pubDate').text            
           book = {
               'title': title,
               'link': link,
               'published': published
              }
           book_list.append(book)        
           return print(book_list)

print('Starting scraping')
goodreads_rss()
print('Finished scraping')

I was getting good data, and so Step 1 (above) was done. The real meat here is processing the data. I mentioned before, Goodreads gives a really ugly RSS feed. It has several tags for data in it, but they aren’t actually used for some reason. Here is a single sample of what a single book looks like:

<item>
<guid></guid>
<pubdate></pubdate>
<title></title>
<link/>
<book_id>5907</book_id>
<book_image_url></book_image_url>
<book_small_image_url></book_small_image_url>
<book_medium_image_url></book_medium_image_url>
<book_large_image_url></book_large_image_url>
<book_description>Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001).]]&gt;</book_description>
<book id="5907">
<num_pages>366</num_pages>
</book>
<author_name>J.R.R. Tolkien</author_name>
<isbn></isbn>
<user_name>Josh</user_name>
<user_rating>4</user_rating>
<user_read_at></user_read_at>
<user_date_added></user_date_added>
<user_date_created></user_date_created>
<user_shelves>2008-reads</user_shelves>
<user_review></user_review>
<average_rating>4.28</average_rating>
<book_published>1937</book_published>
<description>
<img alt="The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546071216l/5907._SY75_.jpg"/><br/>
                                    author: J.R.R. Tolkien<br/>
                                    name: Josh<br/>
                                    average rating: 4.28<br/>
                                    book published: 1937<br/>
                                    rating: 4<br/>
                                    read at: <br/>
                                    date added: 2011/02/22<br/>
                                    shelves: 2008-reads<br/>
                                    review: <br/><br/>
                                    ]]&gt;
  </description>
</item>

Half the data isn’t within the useful tags, instead, it’s just down below the image tag inside the Description. Not all of it though. It’s ugly and weird. The other thing that REALLY sticks out here, if you skim through it, there is NO “title” attribute. The boot title isn’t (quite) even in the feed. Instead, it just has a Book ID, which is a number that, presumably, relates to something on Goodreads.

In the above code, there is a line “for a in books”, which starts a loop and builds an array of book objects. This is where all the data I’ll need later will go, for each book. in a format similar to what is show “title = a.find(‘title’).text”. First I pulled out the easy ones that I might want when later constructing the actual post.

  • num_pages
  • book_description
  • author_name
  • user_rating
  • isbn (Not every book has one, but some do)
  • book_published
  • img

Lastly, I also pulled out the “description” and set to work parsing it out. It’s just a big string, and it’s regularly formatted across all books, so I split it on the br tags. This gave me a list with each line as an entry in the list. I counted out the index for each list element and then split them again on “: “, assigning the value at index [1] (the second value) to various variables.

The end result is an array of book objects with usable data that I can later build into a string that will be delivered to WordPress as a post. The code at this point looks like this:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
​
url = "GOODREADS URL"
book_list = []
​
def goodreads_rss(feed_url):
   try:
       r = requests.get(feed_url)
       soup = BeautifulSoup(r.content, features='lxml')
       books = soup.findAll('item')
       for a in books:
           print(a)
           book_blob = a.find('description').text.split('<br/>')
           book_data = book_blob[0].split('\n                                     ')
           author = a.find('author_name').text
           isbn = a.find('isbn').text
           desc = a.find('book_description').text
           image = str(a.find('img'))
           title = str(image).split('"')[1]
           article = {
               'author': author,
               'isbn': isbn,
               'desc': desc,
               'title': title,
               'image': image,
               'published': book_data[4].split(": ")[1],
               'my_rating': book_data[5].split(": ")[1],
               'date_read': book_data[7].split(": ")[1],
               'my_review': book_data[9].split(": ")[1],
               # Uncomment for debugging
               #'payload': book_data,
              }
           book_list.append(article)
       return book_list
   except Exception as e:
       print('The scraping job failed. See exception: ')
       print(e)
​
print('Starting scraping')
for_feed = goodreads_rss(url)
for each in for_feed:
   print(each)

And a sample of the output looks something like this (3 books):

{'author': 'George Orwell', 'isbn': '', 'desc': ' When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.]]>', 'title': 'Animal Farm', 'image': '<img alt="Animal Farm" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1424037542l/7613._SY75_.jpg"/>', 'published': '1945', 'my_rating': '4', 'date_read': '2011/02/22', 'my_review': ''}
{'author': 'Philip Pullman', 'isbn': '0679879242', 'desc': "Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want--but what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other.]]>", 'title': 'The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)', 'image': '<img alt="The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1505766203l/119322._SX50_.jpg"/>', 'published': '1995', 'my_rating': '4', 'date_read': '2011/02/22', 'my_review': ''}
{'author': 'J.R.R. Tolkien', 'isbn': '', 'desc': 'Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001).]]>', 'title': 'The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0)', 'image': '<img alt="The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546071216l/5907._SY75_.jpg"/>', 'published': '1937', 'my_rating': '4', 'date_read': '2011/02/22', 'my_review': ''}

I still would like to get the Title, which isn’t an entry, but, each Image, uses the Book Title as its alt text. I can use the previously pulled-out “image” string to get this. The image result is a complete HTML Image tag and link. It’s regularly structured, so I can split it, then take the second entry (the title) and assign it to a variable. I should not have to worry about titles with quotes being an issue, since the way Goodreads is sending the payload, these quotes should already be removed or dealt with in some way, or the image tag itself wouldn’t work.

title = str(image).split('"')[1]

I’m not going to go super deep into the formatting process, for conciseness, but it’s not really that hard and the code will appear in my final code chunk. Basically, I want the entries to look like little cards, with a thumbnail image, and most of the data pulled into my array formatted out. I’ll mock up something using basic HTML code independently, then use that code to build the structure of my post string. It will look something like this when finished, with the variables stuck in place in the relevant points, so the code will loop through, and insert all the values:

post_array = []
for each in for_feed:
   post = f'<div class="book-card"> <div> <div class="book-image">' \
          f'{each["image"]}' \
          f'</div> <div class="book-info"> <h3 class="book-title">' \
          f'{each["title"]}' \
          f'</h3> <h4 class="book-author">' \
          f'{each["author"]}' \
          f'</h4> <p class="book-details">' \
          f'Published: {each["published"]} | Pages:{each["pages"]}' \
          f'</p> <p class="book-review">'
   if each["my_rating"] != "0":
          post += f'My Rating: {each["my_rating"]}/5<br>'
   post+= f'{each["my_review"]}' \
          f'</div> </div> <div class="book-description"> <p class="book-summary">' \
          f'Description: {each["desc"]}' \
          f'</p> </div> </div>'
​
   print(post)
   post_array.append(post)

I don’t use all of the classes added, but I did add custom classes to everything, I don’t want to have to go back and modify my code later if I want to add more formatting. I did make a bit of simple CSS that can be added to the WordPress custom CSS (or any CSS actually, if you just wanted to stick this in a webpage) to make some simple cards. They should center in whatever container they get stuck inside, in my case, it’s the WordPress column.

.book-card {
background-color: #DDDDDD;
width: 90%;
margin: 20px auto;
padding:10px;
border: solid 1px;
min-height: 200px;
}
​
.book-image {
float: left;
margin-bottom: 10px;
margin-right: 20px;
width:100px;
}
​
.book-image img {
width: 100%;
object-fit: cover;
}
​
.book-info {
margin: 10px;
}

The end result looks something like this. Unfortunately, the images in the feed are tiny, but that’s ok, it doesn’t need to be huge.

Something I noticed along the way, I had initially been using the “all books” RSS feed, which meant it was giving all books on my profile, not JUST read books. I switched the RSS feed to “read” and things still worked, but “read” only returns a maximum of 200 books. Fortunately, I use shelves based on year for my books, so I can go through each shelf and pull out ALL the books I have read over the years.

Which leads me to a bit of a split in the process.

At some point, I’ll want to run this code, on a schedule somewhere, and have it check for newly read books (probably based on date), and post those as they are read.

But I also want to pull and post ALL the old reads, by date. These two paths will MOSTLY use the same code. For the new books, I’ll attach it to the “read” list, have it check the feed, then compare the date added in the latest entry, entry [0], to the current date. If it’s new, say, within 24 hours, it’ll post the book as a new post.

Change of plans. Rather than make individual posts, I’m going to just generate a pile of HTML code, and make backdated posts for each previous year. Much simpler and cleaner. I can then run the code once a year and make a new post on December 31st. Goodreads already serves the basic purpose of “book tracking”, I mostly just want an archive version. It’s also cleaner looking in the blog and means I don’t need to run the script all the time or have it even make the posts itself.

For the archive, I’ll pull all entries for each of my yearly shelves, then make a post for all of them, replacing the “published date” on each with the “date added” date. Because I want the entries on my Blog to match the (approximate) finished date.

I think, we’ll see.

I’ve decided to just strike out these changes of plans. After making the post, I noticed the date added, is not the date read. I know the yearly shelves are accurate, but the date added is when I added it, probably from some other notes at a later date. Unfortunately, the RSS feed doesn’t have any sort of entry for “Date Read” even though it’s a field you can set as a user, so I just removed it. It’s probably for the best, Goodreads only allows one “Date Read,” so any books I’ve read twice, will not be accurate anyway.

This whole new plan of yearly digests also means in the end I can skip step 3 above. I’m not making the script make the posts, I can cut and paste and make them manually. This lets me double-check things. One little bit I found, there was an artifact in the description of some brackets. I just added a string slice to chop it off.

I guess it’s a good idea to at some point mention the second of the two points I wanted to make here, about reusing code. Programming is all about reusing code. Your own code, someone else’s code, it doesn’t matter, code is code. There are only so many ways to do the same thing in code, they are all going to look generically the same. I picked out bits from that linked article and made them work for what I was doing, I’ll pick bits from my FreshRSS poster code, and clean it up as needed to work here. I’ll reuse 90% of the code here, to make two nearly identical scripts, one to run on a schedule, and one to be run several times manually. This also feeds back into point one, knowing what code you need and how to use it. Find the code you need, massage it together into one new block of code, and debug out the kinks. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The output is located here, under the Goodreads category.

Here is the finished complete script:

url = "GOODREADS URL HERE"
​
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
​
book_list = []
​
def goodreads_rss(feed_url):
   try:
       r = requests.get(feed_url)
       soup = BeautifulSoup(r.content, features='lxml')
       books = soup.findAll('item')
       for a in books:
           # print(a)
           book_blob = a.find('description').text.split('<br/>')
           book_data = book_blob[0].split('\n                                     ')
           author = a.find('author_name').text
           isbn = a.find('isbn').text
           pages = a.find('num_pages').text
           desc = a.find('book_description').text[:-3]
           image = str(a.find('img'))
           title = str(image).split('"')[1]
           article = {
               'author': author,
               'isbn': isbn,
               'desc': desc,
               'title': title,
               'image': image,
               'pages': pages,
               'published': book_data[4].split(": ")[1],
               'my_rating': book_data[5].split(": ")[1],
               'date_read': book_data[7].split(": ")[1],
               'my_review': book_data[9].split(": ")[1],
               # Uncomment for debugging
               #'payload': book_data,
              }
           book_list.append(article)
       return book_list
   except Exception as e:
       print('The scraping job failed. See exception: ')
       print(e)
​
print('Starting scraping')
for_feed = goodreads_rss(url)
​
post_array = []
for each in for_feed:
   post = f'<div class="book-card"> <div> <div class="book-image">' \
          f'{each["image"]}' \
          f'</div> <div class="book-info"> <h3 class="book-title">' \
          f'{each["title"]}' \
          f'</h3> <h4 class="book-author">' \
          f'{each["author"]}' \
          f'</h4> <p class="book-details">' \
          f'Published: {each["published"]} | Pages:{each["pages"]}' \
          f'</p> <p class="book-review">'
   if each["my_rating"] != "0":
          post += f'My Rating: {each["my_rating"]}/5<br>'
   post+= f'{each["my_review"]}' \
          f'</div> </div> <div class="book-description"> <p class="book-summary">' \
          f'Description: {each["desc"]}' \
          f'</p> </div> </div>'
​
   print(post)
   post_array.append(post)

Code Project: Fresh RSS to WordPress Digest V 2

A while back, I talked about a little simple project that I build that produces a daily RSS digest post on this blog. This of course broke when my RSS Reader died on me. I managed to get Fresh RSS up and running again in Docker, and I’ve been slowly recovering my feeds, which is incredibly slow and tedious to do because there are a shitload of feeds, and i essentially have to cut and paste each URL into FreshRSS, and select the category and half the time they don’t work, so I need to make a note of it for later checking and it’s just… slow.

But since it’s mostly working, I decided to reset up my RSS poster. I may look into setting up a Docker instance just for running Python automations, but for now, I put it on a different Pi I have floating around that plays music. The music part will be part of a different post, but for this purpose, it runs a script, once a day, that pulls a feed, formats it, and posts it. It isn’t high overhead.

While poking around on setting this up, I decided to get a bit more ambitious and found out that, basically every view has it’s own RSS feed. Previously, I was taking the feed from the Starred Articles. But it turns out that Tags each have their own feed. This allowed me to do something I wanted from the start here, which is create TWO feeds, for both of my blogs. So now, articles related to Technology, Politics, Food, and Music, get fed into Blogging Intensifies, and articles related to toys, movies, and video games, go into Lameazoid.

I’ve also filtered both of these out of the main page. I do share these little link digests for others, if they want to read them, but primarily, it’s a little record for myself, to know what I found interesting and was reading that day. This way if say, my Fresh RSS reader crashes, I still have all the old interesting links available.

The other thing I wanted to do was to use some sort of AI system to produce a summary of each article. Right now it just clips off the first 200 characters or so. At the end of the day, this is probably plenty. I’m not really trying to steal content, I just want to share links, but links are also useful with just a wee bit of context to them.

I mentioned before, making this work involved a bit to tweaking to the scrips I was using. First off is an auth.py file which has a structure like below, one dictionary for each blog, and then each dictionary gets put in a list. Adding additional blogs would be as simple as adding a new dictionary and then adding the entry to the list. I could have done this with a custom Class but this was simpler.

BLOG1 = {
    "blogtitle": "BLOG1NAME",
    "url": "FEEDURL1",
    "wp_user": "YOURUSERNAME",
    "wp_pass": "YOURPASSWORD",
    "wp_url": "BLOG1URL",
}

BLOG2 = {
    "blogtitle": "BLOG2NAME",
    "url": "FEEDURL2",
    "wp_user": "YOURUSERNAME",
    "wp_pass": "YOURPASSWORD",
    "wp_url": "BLOG2URL",
}

blogs = [BLOG1, BLOG2]

The script itself got a bit of modification as well, mostly, the addition of a loop to go through each blog in the list, then some variables changed to be Dictionary look ups instead of straight variables.

Also please excuse the inconsistency on the fstring use. I got errors at first so I started editing and removing the fstrings and then realized I just needed to be using Python3 instead of Python2.

from auth import *
import feedparser
from wordpress_xmlrpc import Client, WordPressPost
from wordpress_xmlrpc.methods.posts import NewPost
from wordpress_xmlrpc.methods import posts
import datetime
from io import StringIO
from html.parser import HTMLParser

cur_date = datetime.datetime.now().strftime(('%A %Y-%m-%d'))

### HTML Stripper from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/753052/strip-html-from-strings-in-python
class MLStripper(HTMLParser):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.reset()
        self.strict = False
        self.convert_charrefs= True
        self.text = StringIO()
    def handle_data(self, d):
        self.text.write(d)
    def get_data(self):
        return self.text.getvalue()

def strip_tags(html):
    s = MLStripper()
    s.feed(html)
    return s.get_data()

# Get News Feed
def get_feed(feed_url):
    NewsFeed = feedparser.parse(feed_url)
    return NewsFeed

# Create the post text
def make_post(NewsFeed, cur_blog):
    # WordPress API Point
    build_url = f'https://{cur_blog["wp_url"]}/xmlrpc.php'
    #print(build_url)
    wp = Client(build_url, cur_blog["wp_user"], cur_blog["wp_pass"])

    # Create the Basic Post Info, Title, Tags, etc  This can be edited to customize the formatting if you know what you$    post = WordPressPost()
    post.title = f"{cur_date} - Link List"
    post.terms_names = {'category': ['Link List'], 'post_tag': ['links', 'FreshRSS']}
    post.content = f"<p>{cur_blog['blogtitle']} Link List for {cur_date}</p>"
    # Insert Each Feed item into the post with it's posted date, headline, and link to the item.  And a brief summary f$    for each in NewsFeed.entries:
        if len(strip_tags(each.summary)) > 100:
            post_summary = strip_tags(each.summary)[0:100]
        else:
            post_summary = strip_tags(each.summary)
        post.content += f'{each.published[5:-15].replace(" ", "-")} - <a href="{each.links[0].href}">{each.title}</a></$                        f'<p>Brief Summary: "{post_summary}"</p>'
        # print(each.summary_detail.value)
        #print(each)

    # Create the actual post.
    post.post_status = 'publish'
    #print(post.content)
    # For Troubleshooting and reworking, uncomment the above then comment out the below, this will print results instea$    post.id = wp.call(NewPost(post))

    try:
        if post.id:
            post.post_status = 'publish'
            call(posts.EditPost(post.id, post))
    except:
        pass
        #print("Error creating post.")

#Get the news feed
for each in blogs:
    newsfeed = get_feed(each["url"])
# If there are posts, make them.
    if len(newsfeed.entries) > 0:
        make_post(newsfeed, each)
        #print(NewsFeed.entries)

Code Project – Python Flask Top Ten Movies Site

So, I mentioned dumping the Flask Blog a while back, but then I decided that since I had managed to get it all working, it would be somewhat trivial to get it working on a subdomain, instead of a main domain, which had been my original plan to start with.  I was never too excited about dropping this project because I have a few ideas for little projects that I wanted to build that would actually work pretty well in Python and Flask, since it essentially adds a direct path to running a back end style script and a front in interface.  Part of my frustration had come from trying to integrate OTHER Flask projects into the same website and Python code.  Specifically the Top Ten Films website.  

So I stripped out all of the work I had done on integrating the Top Ten movies site, and got the bare Blog running on smallblog.bloggingintensifies.com.  That’s not a link, don’t bother trying to go there, there is nothing there (More on that in a bit).  In this process, I got to thinking, I could run separate Flask Instances, one for each project, though I feel like that’s probably kind of super inefficient for server overhead.  I went and did it anyway, with the Top Ten Movies site.

Which worked fine.

At this point, I realized, I had a working copy of this website to work with and test.  A lot fo my previous frustration was adapting and merging two Python files, which share some redundancy, which share the same names on some secondary files and variables.  I could now, modify the Top Ten Movies code, and test it, to remove the problem duplication.  Satisfied, I shut off the Flask Blog, and merged the code again, and, it worked!  Worked as expected.  I did update the code a bit more again to add in the user/admin features of the Blog to the Movies page, so no one else can change the list.  

I also changed the subdomain from smallblog.bloggingintensifies, to flask.bloggingintensifies.com.  I mostly plan to use this sub domain to show off Flask Python projects, not just this blog I’m never going to fully utilize, so the name change makes more sense.

I also used some of the other HTML knowledge I’ve gained, well, the modern HTML knowledge, to reformat the Movie Site from how it was built in the class.  The class just had a long single column with ten movies.  I’ve changed it so number 1 is large and everything else is a smaller grid.  It’s much prettier looking now.  I doubt it changes much, if at all, but it’s a neat and fun project.

Tuesday 2023-04-11 – Link List

Blogging Intensifies Link List for Tuesday 2023-04-11

11-Apr-2023 – The Marvels’ first trailer is a cosmic game of musical chairs

Brief Summary: “Captain Marvel’s surprise appearance at the end of Ms. Marvel was a reminder that the MCU’s strongest pinch hitter only ever comes down to Earth eithe”

11-Apr-2023 – ‘Rogers: The Musical’ From ‘Hawkeye’ Series Premiering At Disneyland

Brief Summary: ”
What started out as a bit in the Hawkeye Disney+ series is now becoming a reality! Rogers: The Musical is coming to Disneyland this summer.

In th”

11-Apr-2023 – Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: New Raspberry Pi Code Editor, PyCon US This Month and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Brief Summary: “View this email in your browser. Warning: Flashing Imagery
Welcome to the latest Python on Microcontrollers newsletter! This is a rather large issue a”

11-Apr-2023 – Google is Coming for Your Fitbit Account

Brief Summary: “Google announced today that it will begin transitioning Fitbit accounts to Google accounts this summer, with the transition mandatory by 2025.
The pos”

10-Apr-2023 – Raspberry Pi Introduces a Code Editor for Kids

Brief Summary: “In keeping with its mission of bringing computing to the young, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a beta version of a web-based software code e”

11-Apr-2023 – Sailor Moon Cosmos Shares Eternal Sailor Mars and Eternal Sailor Venus Trailer

Brief Summary: ”
The two-parter Sailor Moon Cosmos movies are going to tell the story of the manga’s “final battle.” The first movie will hit Japanese theaters on Jun”

11-Apr-2023 – #4440: Nissin Cup Noodles Breakfast Ramen Noodles In Sauce – United States

Brief Summary: ”
Well, I got one. More coming. There will be a definitive guide. That being said, it’s spring break and the kids are home with me. I’ve been walking t”

Ending My Experiment with Flask

I really like Python, but I have one major gripe with it. It’s a pain in the ass to actually share any projects. Python can’t easily be packaged into an executable, and it doesn’t really work well on the web. I had some vague high hopes of building some Flask based web apps, and I may revisit it at some point, but even just trying to share some of the projects I made during my Python class had become a cumbersome pain to manage.

I had originally set up the blog project over on JoshMiller.net. A domain I have, and don’t really want to dump, but don’t really have a use for. I also do not need another blog. “Traditionally” I would use that domain for “personal blogging” but that’s what this site is for, and I’m happy with the state of things here. The Flask blog was also extremely basic and would require a lot of code work to make workable, with things like image management and an RSS feed and some sort of theme system etc. I could probably do it, but…. why?

One thing I’ve learned after working on many fruitless projects over the years. It’s ok for a project to be kind of pointless, but it’s not ok for it to just be completely pointless. There are plenty of much better platforms for blogging, and frankly, all of them are “Just use WordPress”. Another angle is learning how to run sites with something besides Apache, but that tine would be better just learning Nginx.

Anyway, part of the point was to take the base Flask Blog app, and integrate other Flash Apps into it. The problem is, all of the ones I have built are designed to be stand alone apps. They often reuse some name space so i can’t just copy/paste the code in. Then things start to get screwy with modules and imports. The code itself is also not super reusable. Flask can host HTML code, but it’s all very specifically laid out and structured. I can’t just drop the same code into a folder somewhere and run it on a straight Apache instance.

What does work well for this, is JavaScript. Which is basically entirely intended for web based use. Most of the ideas I have had for projects would be much better suited running as JavaScript sites that are much more portable.

Anyway, all of this is mostly to say, I have disabled the Flask Blog I had hosted on JoshMiller.net and rolled it back to the broken landing page I was building. I don’t really care about this site anyway. Hell even the landing page concept is redundant because I’ve got a nice little Github Page serving that purpose.