playing with web scraper (Beautiful Soup) to expose BodyBuilding.com's exercise database (to later be turned into a restful service maybe)

scraper.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import pycurl
from io import BytesIO
import re
import sys

END = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
BB_URL = "http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/list/index/selected/"
	
class Exercise():
	#
	#	name
	#	also known as
	#	type
	#	main muscle worked
	#	other muscles
	#	equipment
	#	mechanics
	#	level
	#	sport
	#	force
	#
	def __init__(self, kwargs):
		self.name = kwargs['name']
		self.aka = kwargs['Also Known As']
		self.type = kwargs['Type']
		self.main_muscle = kwargs['Main Muscle Worked']
		self.other_muscles = kwargs['Other Muscles']
		self.equipment = kwargs['Equipment']
		self.mechanics = kwargs['Mechanics Type']
		self.level = kwargs['Level']
		self.sport = kwargs['Sport']
		self.force = kwargs['Force']
	
	def __str__(self):
		return str(self.__dict__)

## extract html contents
def get_html(url):
	print(url)
	buffer = BytesIO()
	c = pycurl.Curl()
	c.setopt(c.URL, url)
	c.setopt(c.WRITEDATA, buffer)
	c.perform()
	c.close()
	try:
		text = buffer.getvalue().decode('UTF-8')
		return text
	except:
		print(sys.exc_info()[0])
		return None

## helper method for listing page
def _get_list_of_exercises(listing_html):
	if listing_html is None:
		return None
	soup = BeautifulSoup(listing_html, "html.parser")
	try:
		listResults = soup.find("div", {"id": "listResults"})
		names = listResults.find_all("div", {"class": "exerciseName"})
		a = map(lambda x: x.find("a"), names)
		get_href = lambda x: x['href']
		hrefs = map(get_href, a)
		return list(hrefs)
	except:
		print(sys.exc_info()[0])
		return None

## helper method for detail page
def _get_exercise_details(details_html):
	try:
		soup = BeautifulSoup(details_html, "html.parser")
		details = soup.find("div", {"id": "exerciseDetails"})
		rows = details.find_all("span", {"class": "row"})
	except:
		print(sys.exc_info()[0])
		return None
	name = details.h1.text.strip().replace(" ", "-").replace('\n', "")
	args = {
		"name":							name,
		"Also Known As":				[],
		"Type":							"",
		"Main Muscle Worker":			"",	
		"Other Muscles":				"",
		"Equipment":					"",
		"Mechanics Type":				"",
		"Level":						"",
		"Sport":						"",
		"Force":						""	
	}
	for row in rows:
		groups = re.search('(.+):(.+)', row.text.replace('\n', '').strip())
		args[groups.group(1).strip()] = groups.group(2).strip()
		try:
			if groups.group(1).strip() == "Also Known As":
				args["Also Known As"] = map(replace(" ", "-"), args["Also Known As"].split(', '))
		except:
			print(sys.exc_info()[0])

	return Exercise(args)

def main():
	exercises = []
	for letter in END:
		_exercises = _get_list_of_exercises(get_html(BB_URL + letter))
		if _exercises is None:
			continue
		else:
			exercises += _exercises

	for exercise in exercises:
		e = _get_exercise_details(get_html(exercise))
		if e is None:
			continue
		print(e)
	

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

Where will this code store all the exercises?

Depends on the use case I suppose. You could consider syncing the bodybuilding data into your own datastore, or more likely, we would always hit the BB pseudo-service and then cache locally so we don't worry about staleness.

I was thinking about writing a lifting app for my own use so maybe I'll revisit this code. Clearly, I was doodling for the most part :)