A simple script that goes through the Boston Big Picture archive and downloads all the beautiful pictures. See https://cwoebker.com/posts/the-beauty-of-big-pictures.

bigpic.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
*********************************************
 The Beauty of Boston's Big Picture albums.
 by Cecil Woebker (http://cwoebker.com)
*********************************************

 Usage:
 $ ./bigpic.py

 Saves all pictures from the Boston Glove Big Picture archive
 to the current directory.
"""

import os

import urllib2
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup, Comment

from clint.textui import progress, puts, colored


def getArchive():
    puts("Getting archvive list...")
    urlList = []
    data = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.boston.com/bigpicture').read()
    soup = BeautifulSoup(data)
    results = soup.findAll('td', {"class": "drp"})
    results = results[0].findAll(text=lambda text: isinstance(text, Comment))
    results = BeautifulSoup(results[0]).findAll('option')
    del results[0]
    for item in results:
        urlList.append(item['value'])
    puts(colored.green("Found %d links." % len(urlList)))
    return urlList


def getAlbums(urlList):
    albums = []
    puts("Locating Albums...")
    for url in progress.bar(urlList):
        data = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()
        soup = BeautifulSoup(data)
        results = soup.findAll('td', style="padding-top:18px;")
        for item in results:
            albums.append(item.find('a', style="font-size:14px;font-weight:bold;")['href'])
    puts(colored.green("Found %d albums." % len(albums)))
    return albums


def getPhotos(albums):
    puts("Locating Photos...")
    count = 0
    result = []
    for album in progress.bar(albums):
        photos = []
        data = urllib2.urlopen(album).read()
        soup = BeautifulSoup(data)
        results = soup.findAll('img', {"class": "bpImage"})
        for item in results:
            photos.append(item['src'])
        count += len(photos)
        result.append(photos)
    puts(colored.green("Found %d photos." % count))
    return result


def downloadPhoto(folder, photo):
    u = urllib2.urlopen(photo)
    localFile = open(os.path.join(folder, photo.split('/')[-1]), "wb")
    localFile.write(u.read())
    localFile.close()
    u.close()


def main():
    print __doc__
    urlList = getArchive()
    albums = getAlbums(urlList)
    photos = getPhotos(albums)
    urls = dict(zip(albums, photos))
    puts("--------------")
    puts(colored.yellow("Downloading..."))
    puts("--------------")
    for key in progress.bar(urls.keys()):
        splitted = key.split('/')
        folder = os.path.join(splitted[-3], splitted[-2], splitted[-1].split('.')[0])
        if not os.path.exists(folder):
            os.makedirs(folder)
        for item in urls[key]:
            downloadPhoto(folder, item)
        puts("%s done." % key)
    puts(colored.green("Finished."))


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()