Builds epub book out of Paul Graham's essays.

pgessays.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Builds epub book out of Paul Graham's essays: http://paulgraham.com/articles.html
Author: Ola Sitarska <[email protected]>
Copyright: Licensed under the GPL-3 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html)

1. This script requires python-epub-library: http://code.google.com/p/python-epub-builder/
2. Install python packages with "pip install thing"
3. The easiest way to transfer is with USB. Plug in the Kindle, then take the "Paul Graham's Essays" folder and drag it into the documents folder on Kindle.

"""

import re, ez_epub, urllib2, genshi
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

def addSection(link, title):
    if not 'http' in link:
        page = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.paulgraham.com/'+link).read()
        soup = BeautifulSoup(page)
        soup.prettify() 
    else:
        page = urllib2.urlopen(link).read()
        
    section = ez_epub.Section()
    try:
        section.title = title
        print section.title

        if not 'http' in link:
            font = str(soup.findAll('table', {'width':'435'})[0].findAll('font')[0])
            if not 'Get funded by' in font and not 'Watch how this essay was' in font and not 'Like to build things?' in font and not len(font)<100:
                content = font
            else:
                content = ''
                for par in soup.findAll('table', {'width':'435'})[0].findAll('p'):
                    content += str(par)

            for p in content.split("<br /><br />"):
                section.text.append(genshi.core.Markup(p))

            #exception for Subject: Airbnb
            for pre in soup.findAll('pre'):
                section.text.append(genshi.core.Markup(pre))
        else:
            for p in str(page).replace("\n","<br />").split("<br /><br />"):
                section.text.append(genshi.core.Markup(p))
    except:
        pass
    
    return section


book = ez_epub.Book()
book.title = "Paul Graham's Essays"
book.authors = ['Paul Graham']

page = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html').read()
soup = BeautifulSoup(page)
soup.prettify()

links = soup.findAll('table', {'width': '435'})[1].findAll('a')
sections = []
for link in links:
    sections.append(addSection(link['href'], link.text))
    
book.sections = sections
book.make(book.title)