Get product list for a specific search query in MercadoLibre.com, post the number of new items to the Ubidots Cloud

get_product_mercadolibre.py

#!/usr/bin/python

"""
Get product list for a specific search query in MercadoLibre.com, post the number of new items to the Ubidots Cloud
"""
 
__author__ = "Agustin Pelaez"

from sys import argv
import ubidots
import requests
import time

if __name__ == "__main__":

    if len(argv) < 2:
        print "Usage: %s API_KEY" % argv[0]
        sys.exit(0)
 
    api = ubidots.ApiClient(argv[1])
    new_cars_var = api.get_variable('53374b0b7625420ef842250b')
    old_cars = 0
    
    while(1):

        # Get product list webpage from MercadoLibre

        query = requests.get('http://vehiculos.mercadolibre.com.co/gol-comfortline_PciaId_Antioquia_YearRange_2010-2012')

        str_query = query.text
        
        i = 0
        urls = []    

        # Look for the URLs that link to each individual product

        while True:
            i = str_query.find('http://carro.mercadolibre.com.co',i)
            if i == -1:
                break
            url = str_query[i:str_query.find('\"',i)]
            try:
                urls.index(url)
            except:
                urls.append(url)
            i += 1

        cars = len(urls)
        new_cars = cars - old_cars

        print "New cars: "+ str(new_cars)

        # Save the value to Ubidots
        
        new_cars_var.save_value({'value':new_cars})

        old_cars = cars
    
        time.sleep(60)