[python] gold price tracker

[moudy]

hello every one, I have been working on this code for like a week, it works fine. It is supposed to get the source code of this website:

Code: Select all

http://www.goldalert.com/

and will search for the gold price, the time, and change from previous reading in percent.
this is the code, I commented every line becuase im a bit paranoid about comments, and i like every thing well commented (any feed back in enhancing the code is appreciated):

Code: Select all

import urllib2
import re
import time

while 1: 
#reading web page source, and making a list of lines (source lines)
        res = urllib2.urlopen("http://www.goldalert.com/")
        lines = res.readlines()

#getting the line that has the gold data
        for i in lines:
                if i.find('<div id="gp">') > -1:
                        g_l = lines[lines.index(i)]
        l_g_p = re.findall('[\d\.]{1,50}', g_l)
        gold_price = l_g_p[0]

#getting the line that has the change data
        for i in lines:
                if i.find('<div id="chg"') > -1:
                        c_l = lines[lines.index(i)]
                	

        l_e_c_n = re.findall('[\+\-][\d\.]{1,10}', c_l)
        change_number = l_e_c_n[0] 

        l_e_c_p = re.findall('[\+\-][\d\.]{1,10}[\%]', c_l)
        change_percent = l_e_c_p[0]

#getting the line that has the time data
        for i in lines:
                if i.find('<div id="tm">') > -1:
                        time_line = lines[lines.index(i)]
        time_p = re.sub('\t<div id="tm"> ', '',time_line)
        time = re.sub('</div>', '',time_p)

#managing data
        final = gold_price+'   '+change_number+'   '+change_percent+'   '+time
        msn_1 = gold_price+'   '+'[c=4]'+change_number+'   '+change_percent+'[/c]'+'   '+time #negative = red
        msn_2 = gold_price+'   '+'[c=3]'+change_number+'   '+change_percent+'[/c]'+'   '+time #positive = green
        msn_0 = gold_price+'   '+'[c=1]'+change_number+'   '+change_percent+'[/c]'+'   '+time #positive = green


#opening output file
        fileHandle2 = open ( 'output.txt', 'a' )

#writing data to output file
        if change_number < 0:
                fileHandle2.write(msn_1)
        elif change_number == 0:
                fileHandle2.write(msn_0)
        elif change_number > 0:
                fileHandle2.write(msn_2)

#closing output file
        fileHandle2.close()

time.sleep(60)

I used the urllib2 library to fetch the HTML code, is there any other way to get the HTML source ? I'm gonna add more stuff to the script. so for now I would like to get any feedback if possible.

[moudy]

and this is the code pasted to the suck-o code bin:
http://www.code.suck-o.com/42345

[l0ngb1t]

nice one...
you may not use to track the gold price but learning how to read a web page and manage a text is great
gonna do it with java once i get some free time