20
May
2010
Big Picture Cataloguer: An update
In just over a week since I released the Big Picture Cataloguer, there’s been a surprising amount of interest and enthusiasm about it. Since I still haven’t gotten binary versions of the program for OS X and Linux up (I’ve no access to an OS X computer, and getting the required libraries installed on Linux has proved to be quite difficult), I’ve decided to relent and share the source code of the cataloguer under a Creative Commons license.
The script makes use of pyexiv2 – the 0.2 branch – for metadata editing, mechanize for grabbing pages and submitting error reports, the very handy unaccented_map() class (included) for unicode trickery and of course the wonderful XML parser, BeautifulSoup.
Naturally, it’s available from the Big Picture Cataloguer’s page in the Code section of this site.
Given how much The Big Picture galleries’ HTML format has subtly changed over time, and the fact I wrote this in a rush, it’s quite messy, but it does the job.
Today’s update is of version 0.3, which has an optional “quiet mode” to enable users to schedule the program to run frequently. Enjoy!
