Checking out a Sub-Reddit’s Front Page – Python

This code uses Reddit’s own API, praw, to download all the post titles, karma counts, position, and reddit id of each post within a sub reddit.

This example collects all the info from the top 100 posts in r/technology at on hour intervals and then saves it to a file.

import praw
from time import gmtime, strftime
from threading import Timer

# this is the sub-reddit we want to work with
str_subreddit = 'technology'

# set the timer and create a function 
def _getthePosts():

    # set the user agent for reddit
    r = praw.Reddit(user_agent='_cool_stuff_')

    # log in as a user
    r.login('myUserName','123456')

    # get the submissions for android
    praw_subs = r.get_subreddit(str_subreddit).get_top(limit=100)

    # list where all the the data will do
    list_sub_data = []

    # counter to see in which possition it is
    int_sub = 1

    # iterate through submissions
    for each_sub in praw_subs:

        # this will be the output line
        str_out = '%s\t%d\t%d\t"%s"'% (each_sub.id,     # reddit's id
                                       int_sub,         # possition
                                       each_sub.score,  # karma
                                       each_sub.title)  # title

        # append to above list
        list_sub_data.append(str_out.encode('utf-8'))
        int_sub+=1

    # get the time the data was taken
    time_now = strftime("%w_%Y%M%d_%H%M%S", gmtime())
    print time_now

    # create file and name according to time
    f_o = open('%s.txt'%time_now,'w')
    f_o.write('\n'.join(list_sub_data))
    f_o.close()

    # set the timer for one hour and run function again
    Timer(3600,_getthePosts).start()

_getthePosts()