reddit-hot-recorder

What is it?

• My first published python project :)
• A script that collects metadata from a Reddit's subreddit hot section, at regular intervals, and turns it into a serie of charts, to be animated.

Here is an extract of a recording of r/all:

How does it work?

• The hotcollect module takes care of collecting the data and can save it into a json.
• The hotplot module uses the collected data to generate a serie of charts.
• The final step requires a software to turn the serie of charts (.png files) into a movie or a .gif.

required:

• matplotlib
• numpy
• PRAW

Examples:

from hotcollect import collect_data
from hotplot import plot_collec
data_collec = collect_data(sub='france',maxposts=10,interval_sec=30,
                           duration_min=5,feedback=True,savefile='france.json')
plot_collec(data_collec)

• This script will watch the top 10 posts of r/france during 5 minutes, every 30 seconds.
  note: You should not go below interval_sec=10 as it takes a couple of seconds for the API to collect the data.
• It will save the collected data in france.json.
• It will print the following feedback:

1/10 snapshot recorded on Nov 16 2017 11:37:37
2/10 snapshot recorded on Nov 16 2017 11:38:09

• plot_collec(data_collec) will generate 10 .png to be turned into a .mp4.
  On linux, I use ffmepg to turns the serie of .png into a .mp4, as follow:

ffmpeg -start_number 1 -framerate 24 -i %04d.png output.mp4

If your local time doesn't match the local time of your viewers, you can correct the timestamp of your collected data by using offset_timestamp(data_collec, delta_hours).

For example, if I live in Europe and want to plot for american viewers (-7 hours compared to my local time):

from hotcollect import collect_data, offset_timestamp
from hotplot import plot_collec
data_collec = collect_data(sub='all',maxposts=10,interval_sec=30,
duration_min=5,feedback=False)
for data in data_collec:
    data = offset_timestamp(data, -7)
plot_collec(data_collec)

And finally:

• feel free to comment my code, declare issues, propose changes, etc.
  It was a learning exercise for me, both on Python and on using GitHub.
• it's under MIT licence which mean that you can do whatever you want with it, if I understood correctly.
  Don't do evil though, if ever you find a way to do evil things with it...