Full Circle

COMMAND & CONQUER
the currently processed issue, and
issue 1 00. So issue 98 would be a
difference of 2, and 1 07 would be
-7. The difference (times 365/1 2 -
roughly one month) is then
subtracted from the date of the
startPoint (201 5-08), and results in
a new year and month. The days
shift, but since FCM is a monthly
release, it’s unimportant (and even
deleted entirely with the strftime
function).
One could also just multiply 32
by the difference - though having
that many extra days for some
months may cause more problems.
It’s by no means perfect - as it’s
cumulative, there may be problems
with February issues (for example).
FUNCTION:
CREATEARTICLELIST
This function uses os.listdir, and
some regexp/searches to ensure
that only my articles are accounted
for. Since my files are in the format
FCM1 00 - C&C - Title, I simply make
sure the filename starts with
FCM[0-9]+ (one or more numbers
after the FCM). I also make sure it
doesn’t contain .desktop (this is
important for drive - as every file
has a .desktop companion). Once
the lists have been added into
output, the list isn’t flat (has
multiple sublists). That’s what line
54 fixes.
Line 55 removes any .odt
extension listed (as Google Drive
files have no extension, and .odt
was what I originally used). Lastly, I
use the same sort of replace
function to shorten any Command
& Conquer into C&C - not strictly
necessary, but ensures things are
uniform.
Line 57 ensures there are no
duplicates - as a Python set can
contain only unique values. This
essentially drops any duplicate
filenames.
The list is then printed into a
temporary file (which is practical
for debugging, or if you just want
to see quickly how many files there
are). The file is then closed, and
the function returns True.
FUNCTION:
UPDATE_DATABASE
This is the crux of the file. It
essentially opens the article-list.txt
file, and reads each line of it. For
each non-empty line, it then does
the following steps:
• Split the line on the “ - “ separator
(so you get a list like this:
[‘FCM1 00’, ‘C&C’, ‘Title’])
• Removes the FCM part - to get
just the issue number.
• Creates an empty key/value pair
in the entry dict.
• Fills the information into the
entry dict (if the title is empty - as
some of my files were poorly
named in the past, it just inserts a
string “Unknown”). It also removes
any newline characters.
• dateFind is used to calculate the
estimated date for that issue.
• Database.update is used to insert
(or update) the information for the
current issue.
Once the for loop is completed,
the file is then closed, the -1 entry
of the database (original
entryTemplate) is deleted, and the
database is returned.
FUNCTION: WRITE_DATABASE
This is a quick function that
uses json.dumps to simply write
the dict to a JSON file. It also
indents it nicely.
FUNCTION:
WRITE_CSV_DATABASE
This function uses csv.writer to
create a valid CSV file. Line 95
dumps the keys of an entry
(specifically, entry 1 00) into a list.
The list is then used to create the
CSV header, and also to make sure
the order of the values are the
same as the headers - so it
matches up.
FUNCTION: MAIN
This is just a function where I
call the rest of the helper
functions (and debugged issues).
You can just as easily paste this
into the if __name__ == “__main__”
area, but the recommendation is to
use a main function, to allow easier
importing.
DRIVE FUNCTIONS
FUNCTION: CD
This just recreates the cd
function from Bash, but also
reverts to the original directory -
so that the drive pull command can
be executed in the correct
directory, without messing up later
writes to JSON or CSV files.
Originally found on StackOverflow
(see Further Reading).
full circle magazine #1 08 1 3 contents ^