okcupyd 0.9.0

A package for interacting with okcupid.com

Getting Started

Installation/Setup

pip/PyPI

okcupyd is available for install from PyPI. If you have pip you can simply run:

pip install okcupyd

to make okcupyd available for import in python.

From Source

You can install from source by running the setup.py script included as part of this repository as follows:

python setup.py install

This can be useful if you want to install a version that has not yet been released on PyPI.

From Docker

okcupyd is available on docker (see https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/imalison/okcupyd/)

If you have docker installed on your machine, you can run

docker run -t -i imalison/okcupyd okcupyd

to get an interactive okcupyd shell.

Use

Interactive

Installing the okcupyd package should add an executable script to a directory in your $PATH that will allow you to type okcupyd into your shell of choice to enter an interactive ipython shell that has been prepared for use with okcupyd. Before the shell starts, you will be prompted for your username and password. This executable script accepts the flags –enable-logger which enables a logger of the given name, and –credentials whose action is described below.

It is highly recommended that you use the –enable-logger=requests and –enable-logger=okcupyd flags if you encounter any problems.

Credentials

If you wish to avoid entering your password each time you start a new session you can do one of the following things:

1. Create a python module (.py file) with your username and password set to the variables USERNAME and PASSWORD respectively. You can start an interactive session with the USERNAME and PASSWORD stored in my\_credentials.py by running

PYTHONPATH=. okcupyd --credentials my_credentials

from the directory that my_credentials.py is stored in

The PYTHONPATH=. at the front of this command is necessary to ensure that the current directory is searched for modules.

If you wish to use a version of this library that you have cloned but not installed, you can use the tox environment venv to do the same thing with such a version of the code:

PYTHONPATH=. tox -e venv -- okcupyd --credentials my_credentials

2. Set the shell environment variables OKC\_USERNAME and OKC\_PASSWORD to your username and password respectively. Make sure to export the variables so they are visible in processes started from the shell. You can make a credentials.sh file to do this using the following template:

export OKC_USERNAME='your_username'
export OKC_PASSWORD='your_password'

Simply run source credentials.sh to set the environment variables and your shell should be properly configured. Note that this approach requires that the relevant environment variables be set before okcupyd.settings is imported.

3. Manually override the values in okcupyd/settings.py. This method is not recommended because it requires you to find the installation location of the package. Also, If you are working with a source controlled version, you could accidentally commit your credentials.

Using --credentials in a custom script

The ~okcupyd.util.misc.add_command_line_options and ~okcupyd.util.misc.handle_command_line_options can be used to make a custom script support the --credentials and --enable-loggers command line flags. The interface to these functions is admittedly a little bit strange. Refer to the example below for details concerning how to use them:

import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
util.add_command_line_options(parser.add_argument)
args = parser.parse_args()
util.handle_command_line_options(args)

Basic Examples

All examples in this section assume that the variable u has been initialized as follows:

import okcupyd
user = okcupyd.User()

Searching profiles

To search through the user:

profiles = user.search(age_min=26, age_max=32)
for profile in profiles[:10]:
    profile.message("Pumpkins are just okay.")

To search for users that have answered a particular question in a way that is consistent with the user’s preferences for that question:

user_question = user.questions.very_important[0]
profiles = user.search(question=user_question)
for profile in profiles[:10]:
    their_question = profile.find_question(user_question.id)
    profile.message("I'm really glad that you answered {0} to {1}".format(
        their_question.their_answer, their_question.question.text
    ))

The search functionality can be accessed without a ~okcupyd.user.User instance:

from okcupyd.search import SearchFetchable

for profile in SearchFetchable(attractiveness_min=8000)[:5]:
    profile.message("hawt...")

This is particularly useful if you want to explicitly provide the session that should be used to search:

from okcupyd.session import Session
from okcupyd.search import SearchFetchable

session = Session.login('username', 'password')
for profile in SearchFetchable(session=session, attractiveness_min=8000)[:5]:
    profile.message("hawt...")

For more details about what filter arguments can be used with these search functions, see the doucmentation for ~okcupyd.search.SearchFetchable

Messaging another user

user.message('foxylady899', 'Do you have a map?')
# This has slightly different semantics; it will not look through the user's
# inbox for an existing thread.
user.get_profile('foxylady889').message('Do you have a map?')

Rating a profile

user.get_profile('foxylady899').rate(5)

Mailbox

first_thread = user.inbox[0]
print(first_thread.messages)

Quickmatch, Essays, Looking For, Details

You can access the essays, looking for attributes and detail attributes of a profile very easily

profile = user.quickmatch()
print(profile.essays.self_summary)
print(profile.looking_for.ages)
print(profile.details.orientation)

The data for these attributes is loaded from the profile page, but it should be noted that this page is only loaded on demand, so the first of these attribute access calls will make an http request.

A logged in user can update their own details using these objects:

user.profile.essays.self_summary = "I'm pretty boring."
user.profile.looking_for.ages = 18, 19
user.profile.details.ethnicities = ['asian', 'black', 'hispanic']

These assignments will result in updates to the okcupid website. When these updates happen, subsequent access to any profile attribute will result in a new http request to reload the profile page.

Fetchable

Most of the collection objects that are returned from function invocations in the okcupyd library are instances of ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable. In most cases, it is fine to treat these objects as though they are lists because they can be iterated over, sliced and accessed by index, just like lists:

for question in user.profile.questions:
    print(question.answer.text)

a_random_question = user.profile.questions[2]
for question in questions[2:4]:
    print(question.answer_options[0])

However, in some cases, it is important to be aware of the subtle differences between ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable objects and python lists. ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable construct the elements that they “contain” lazily. In most of its uses in the okcupyd library, this means that http requests can be made to populate ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable instances as its elments are requested.

The ~okcupyd.profile.Profile.questions ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable that is used in the example above fetches the pages that are used to construct its contents in batches of 10 questions. This means that the actual call to retrieve data is made when iteration starts. If you enable the request logger when you run this code snippet, you get output that illustrates this fact:

{.sourceCode .} 2014-10-29 04:25:04 Livien-MacbookAir requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool[82461] DEBUG "GET /profile/ShrewdDrew/questions?leanmode=1&low=11 HTTP/1.1" 200 None Yes Yes Kiss someone. Yes. Yes Sex. Both equally No, I wouldn't give it as a gift. Maybe, I want to know all the important stuff. Once or twice a week 2014-10-29 04:25:04 Livien-MacbookAir requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool[82461] DEBUG "GET /profile/ShrewdDrew/questions?leanmode=1&low=21 HTTP/1.1" 200 None No. No No Yes Rarely / never Always. Discovering your shared interests The sun Acceptable. No.

Some fetchables will continue fetching content for quite a long time. The search fetchable, for example, will fetch content until okcupid runs out of search results. As such, things like:

for profile in user.search():
    profile.message("hey!")

should be avoided, as they are likely to generate a massive number of requests to okcupid.com.

Another subtlety of the ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable class is that its instances cache its contained results. This means that the second iteration over okcupyd.profile.Profile.questions in the example below does not result in any http requests:

for question in user.profile.questions:
    print(question.text)

for question in user.profile.questions:
    print(question.answer)

It is important to understand that this means that the contents of a ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable are not guarenteed to be in sync with okcupid.com the second time they are requested. Calling ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable.refresh will cause the ~okcupyd.util.fetchable.Fetchable to request new data from okcupid.com when its contents are requested. The code snippet that follows prints out all the questions that the logged in user has answered roughly once per hour, including ones that are answered while the program is running.

import time

while True:
    for question in user.profile.questions:
        print(question.text)
    user.profile.questions.refresh()
    time.sleep(3600)

Without the call to user.profile.questions.refresh(), this program would never update the user.profile.questions instance, and thus what would be printed to the screen with each iteration of the for loop.

Development

tox

If you wish to contribute to this project, it is recommended that you use tox to run tests and enter the interactive environment. You can get tox by running

pip install tox

if you do not already have it.

Once you have cloned the project and installed tox, run:

tox -e py27

This will create a virtualenv that has all dependencies as well as the useful ipython and ipdb libraries installed, and run all okcupyds test suite.

If you want to run a command with access to a virtualenv that was created by tox you can run

tox -e venv -- your_command

To use the development version of the interactive shell (and avoid any conflicts with versions installed in site-packages) you would run the following command:

tox -e venv -- okcupyd

git hooks

If you plan on editing this file (getting_started.rst) you must install the provided git hooks that are included in this repository by running:

bin/create-githook-symlinks.sh

from the root directory of the repository.