mediacloud 3.1.0

MediaCloud API Client Library

This is a python client for accessing the MediaCloud API v2.

Usage

First sign up for an API key. Then

pip install mediacloud

Check CHANGELOG.md for a detailed history of changes.

Examples

Find out how many stories in the top US online news sites mentioned “Zimbabwe” in the last year:

import mediacloud
mc = mediacloud.api.MediaCloud('MY_API_KEY')
res = mc.storyCount('zimbabwe AND president AND tags_id_media:58722749', 'publish_date:[NOW-1YEAR TO NOW]')
print res['count']  # prints the number of stories found

Get 2000 stories from the NYT about a topic in 2018 and dump the output to json:

import mediacloud, json, datetime
mc = mediacloud.api.MediaCloud('MY_API_KEY')

fetch_size = 500
stories = []
last_processed_stories_id = 0
while len(stories) < 2000:
    fetched_stories = mc.storyList('trump AND "north korea" AND media_id:1',
                                   solr_filter=mc.publish_date_query(datetime.date(2018,1,1), datetime.date(2019,1,1)),
                                   last_processed_stories_id=last_processed_stories_id, rows= fetch_size)
    stories.extend(fetched_stories)
    if len( fetched_stories) < fetch_size:
        break
    last_processed_stories_id = stories[-1]['processed_stories_id']
print json.dumps(stories)

Find the most commonly used words in stories from the US top online news sites that mentioned “Zimbabwe” and “president” in 2013:

import mediacloud, datetime
mc = mediacloud.api.MediaCloud('MY_API_KEY')
words = mc.wordCount('zimbabwe AND president AND tags_id_media:58722749',
                     mc.publish_date_query( datetime.date( 2013, 1, 1), datetime.date( 2014, 1, 1)))
print words[0]  # prints the most common word

To find out all the details about one particular story by id:

import mediacloud
mc = mediacloud.api.MediaCloud('MY_API_KEY')
story = mc.story(169440976)
print story['url']  # prints the url the story came from

To save the first 100 stories from one day to a database:

import mediacloud, datetime
mc = mediacloud.api.MediaCloud('MY_API_KEY')
db = mediacloud.storage.MongoStoryDatabase('one_day')
stories = mc.storyList('*', mc.publish_date_query( datetime.date (2014, 01, 01), datetime.date(2014,01,02) ),
                       last_processed_stories_id=0,rows=100)
[db.addStory(s) for s in stories]
print db.storyCount()

Take a look at the test in the mediacloud/test/ module for more detailed examples.

Development

If you are interested in adding code to this module, first clone the GitHub repository.

Testing

First run all the tests. Copy mc-client.config.template to mc-client.config and edit it. Then run python tests.py.

Distributing a New Version

1. Run python test.py to make sure all the test pass

2. Update the version number in mediacloud/__init__.py

3. Make a brief note in the version history section in the README file about the changes

4. Run python setup.py sdist to test out a version locally

5. Then run python setup.py sdist upload -r pypitest to release a test version to PyPI’s test server

6. Run pip install -i https://testpypi.python.org/pypi mediacloud somewhere and then use it with Python to make sure the test release works.

7. When you’re ready to push to pypi run python setup.py sdist upload -r pypi

8. Run pip install mediacloud somewhere and then try it to make sure it worked.