Been learning Python lately. Have done a couple of tutorials and one or two simple programs. This post will be about a simple example of how to access some real estate information that is available from a company called Trulia.
First, some links to sites that helped me figure this out:
- Download Python, install, and some reference documentation: https://www.python.org/downloads/
- Stackoverflow thread about making a URL request in Python: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17301938/making-a-request-to-a-restful-api-using-python
- How to make a Trulia RSS feed with your real estate search criteria: https://www.trulia.com/tools/rss/#code_block
- Some free python IDEs: http://insights.dice.com/2014/09/23/look-5-free-python-editors/
- I decided to go with Visual Studio for an IDE. I picked the custom installation so I could specify Python as a supported language. https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/
The code:
#Just a little POC to retrieve some real estate information from the web #Python 3 import urllib.request #for opening connections to URLs def main(): truliaURL = 'https://www.trulia.com/rss2/for_sale/Burbank,CA/' request = urllib.request.Request(truliaURL) response = urllib.request.urlopen(request) responseData = response.read().decode('utf-8') print(responseData) if __name__ == "__main__": main()