Easy Facebook Scripting in Python | Hacker News Reader

Easy Facebook Scripting in Python

blog.carduner.net

77 pointsdananjaya867 comments

From the comments

> i would like to work in PHP command line code

Just, just no. PHP has many uses, but the command line isn't one of them.

Also I don't think pulling in a script over HTTP is such a great idea, I know it was done for simplicity but why not tell people to download the script first and save it alongside their main script, then just use an 'import filename'.

Now what would be useful, and could probably justify pulling in a module from remote, is if it kept up with Facebook API changes.

This, and previous FB APIs, seem to really be lacking. For a Python API, for instance, you shouldn't be calling generic 'graph' functions and then passing strings to tell it what to do. If you want to do that, you might as well just construct the URL yourself.

Python is powerful for hackers because of introspection. You can pull up a shell and all of the documentation is available with type() and dir() and iPython's tricks. An API that takes actions as strings fails for Python.

I completely agree. This micro api client is absolutely not for developing full fledged applications. I've played around with writing some heavier duty clients for other projects I've worked on that have lots of pythonic goodies in addition to more advanced things like automatic request batching and caching, but I'm still not satisfied with them enough to put it out there.

I love this kind of post. Copy 4 lines of code and you're hacking away. Great job.

The way he imports the module is just crazy. Just download the file and import it normally.

Every step you add to the process cuts down on the number of people who are willing to try it out. Obviously once you determine whether it's useful to you or not, you can do the right thing and just download the file.

Completely agree. The easier it is for someone to cut and paste your code to try it out, the quicker folks will start building on top of it and drive adoption. Great job.

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