[2010-01] reddit fib thread cralwer, probably broken now

fibchain.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Because I was unable to find the root of the Fibbonachi sequence post
# chain in the original story comments (it was nowhere to be found!) I made
# this little hacky script to go back, post by post, until it reache a post
# with no parent. For fun, it displays the users and values as it goes.
# The value isn't always accurate, but that doesn't really matter.

# The result of this (which didn't take very long) it stopped, not very
# far back, because someone deleted a post. Huh. Irritating.
# http://www.reddit.com/comments/2mg72/vote_up_if_you_love_pie/c02bfe6

def main():
	import sys
	import urllib2
	import re
	import time
	
	linkTemplate = "http://www.reddit.com/comments/2mg72/vote_up_if_you_love_pie/%s"
	
	current = "c04vmt1"
	
	while True:
		while True:
			try:
				page = urllib2.urlopen(linkTemplate % current).read()
			except:
				print "urlopen() failed, retrying in 2s."
				sleep(2)
			else:
				break
		
		pattern = re.compile("""<a id="author_[^"]*%s".*?>(.*?)</a>.*?<div id="body_[^"]*%s".*?><div class="md">(.*?)</div>.*?<a id="parent_[^"]*%s"[^>]*? href="[^"]*/([0-9a-zA-Z]+)".""" % (current, current, current), re.DOTALL)
		
		try:
			user, post, parentID = pattern.findall(page)[0]
		except:
			break
		
		number = int(re.sub("[^0-9]", "", post))
		
		print "%24s@%s: %.1e" % (user, current, number)
		
		current = parentID
	
	print
	print "Root post appears to be %s." % current

if __name__ == "__main__": sys.exit(main())