I was asked to help solve a problem today, involving checking the voter registration status of a database of voters against a web-form. This is not a totally straight-forward scripting issue as the web-form contains a randomly generated key and a number of other values that need to be included in the query. So, any program written would need to have a bit of smarts.
It was designed that way, don’t ask me why.
So, I thought to myself, this would be a good opportunity to learn some Python! Honestly, I have never written any Python before and I thought that since Python was a great scripting language to hack stuff together quickly, I should try to see if I could do this in Python. To make it a little challenging, I gave myself two hours to finish it (the length of free time I had while sitting at a local pasar malam this evening).
So, I started by looking up the official Python examples on how to form a HTTP query – straightforward and easy with Python. Then, I did some text processing on the return results to grep the various random keys. Next, I followed the official examples on how to perform a HTTP post. Finally, I used the official examples on how to process a CSV file and perform the checkup under a sub-routine inside a loop.
It took me just an hour to finish the script. I think that this is more of a reflection on the ease of use of Python, rather than my skills. I have just proven to myself that it is possible for me to pick up a new language and accomplish something useful with it in under an hour. Amazing.
Anyway, the code isn’t totally pretty but it is available at github.
Technical Intercourse 