py-chan-api 0.1.3

A Python wrapper for the 4chan API and other imageboards

py-chan-api

Objective:

• Unification: Have one library to use for multiple imageboards. Convert them to 4chan compliant API specifications.
• Wrapper: Parse the JSON to programming-language-specific data structures (in this case, to Python).

API Documentation

4chan

• Official
• Alternate

FFuuka based Imageboards

• Official (Github)
• Official (Website)
• Readthedocs

---

Feature	Source
✔️ Single thread	a.4cdn.org/{board}/thread/{threadnumber}.json
✔️ Thread index	a.4cdn.org/{board}/{pagenumber}.json (threads @ pg #)
✔️ Board list	a.4cdn.org/boards.json
✔️ Board catalog	a.4cdn.org/{board}/catalog.json
✔️ Thread list	a.4cdn.org/{board}/threads.json
✔️ Archived threads	a.4cdn.org/{board}/archive.json
🚧 HTTPS	On by default in urllib3
🚧 Rate limiting	x requests allowed in n seconds
🚧 If-Modified-Since	req.headers['last-modified']
🚧 In-place thread updating	req.headers['last-modified']; difflib

Extra Support

Extra Imageboards	Compatibility
✔️ FFuuka	Thread, Post
❔ warosu
❔ yuki.la

---

Installation

$ pip install py-chan-api             # NOTE: Only Python 3.7+

# Or with virtualenv
$ pip install virtualenv              # Install virtualenv if you haven't already
$ virtualenv venv                     # Create a virtualenv
$ source venv/bin/activate            # Activate it
$ pip install py-chan-api             # Install py-chan-api

Usage

import pychan

# pychan infers what type of object you're giving it. See the above table.
# Whether its a string pointing to a file/dict/dict in string format.

threadIndex     = pychan.FourChan("thread_index.json")
board           = pychan.FourChan("boards.json")
thread          = pychan.FourChan("thread.json")
threadList      = pychan.FourChan("thread_list.json")
archivedThread  = pychan.FourChan("archived_threads.json")
post            = thread.posts[0]

print(thread.posts[0].com)              # Get the first post and its comment

print(post)                             # If you're unsure of what fields to call
                                        # just print the object itself to see a list of key/values

# Or see the type of the unknown object
print(type(pychan.FourChan("unknown.json")))

print(thread.posts[0])
print(threadIndex.threads[0].posts[1])
print(board.trollflags.AC)
print(board.boards[0].title)
print(catalog.page[0].threads[0])
print(threadList.page[0].threads[0])
print(archivedThread[-1])

# To get individual key value/pairs
jdb = thread.posts[0].json              # Convert the Post object to a dictionary
for k,v in jdb.items():                 # Iterate through the key/value pairs
    print(k, v)

Converting

import pychan
fuukaThread = pychan.Fuuka("desu_thread.json")    # Specify the imageboard implementation

# Parallelism (multiprocessing) is turned on automatically if you supply more
# than one key/value pairs in a dictionary.
# You can override this behaviour by specifying the parallel field
# By using a dictionary, you can also output it to a file.
fthread1 = pychan.Fuuka({"desu_thread.json" : "out1.json"}, parallel = True)

# Which then you could read it as a normal 4chan json
fthread = pychan.FourChan("out1.json")

# We can also just use the outputed value from before
print(fthread1.posts[1])      # Note: fthread1 is the same as fthread and fuukaThread

Tests

Tests are done with pytest.

$ pip install -U pytest pytest-xdist
$ pytest tests.py -v

Support

Pull requests are welcome. Feel free to ping shiimizu @ this Matrix server.

⚠️ Archiving (polling)

• Archiving capabilities are beyond the scope of this project.
• Please see:
  • eve
  • hayden
  • basc-archiver
  • go-4chan-api