On both Hostmonster and Umbrahosting, you can execute Python scripts as CGI scripts. But you must take care of these points:

– They must be placed inside the cgi-bin directory.
– Permission should be 755. (777 triggered server error for me)

I didn’t find the latest version of Python anywhere on these two hosts. Let alone Python 2.5, they have Python 2.4. But still I’m happy that I can run Python. The only thing that I didn’t like was the obligation to put my scripts in the cgi-bin directory. So, I couldn’t have URLs like http://masnun.com/hello.py

Later today afternoon, an idea clicke in my mind. Can’t I target a subdomain to the cgi-bin directory? The answer is: YES! Just use a .htaccess file to map certain urls to your cgi-bin directory.

 
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) cgi-bin/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Putting the .htaccess in your domain’s root directory will allow you to put a python file inside your cgi-bin directory and visit it from http://example.com/example.py

 
<?php
/*
* Demo of the SMS API
* Author: maSnun
* URL: http://masnun.com
*/
 
 
// I hosted the WSDL on my own host
$soap = new SoapClient("http://masnun.com/wsdl/wsdl.php");
 
// Set the parameters in an array
 
$a['registrationID'] = "masnun";
$a['password'] = "******";
$a['sourceMsisdn'] = '8801711960803';
$a['destinationMsisdn'] = '88017********';
$a['smsPort'] = 7424;
$a['msgType'] = 4;
$a['charge'] = 2.00 ;
$a['chargedParty'] = '8801711960803';
$a['contentArea'] = 'gpgp_psms';
$a['msgContent'] = 'Hello GP API!';
 
 
try {
    var_dump( $soap->sendSMS( array ("SendSMSRequest" => $a) ) );
} catch (Exception $e) {
 
    var_dump($e->getMessage());
 
}
 
?>

Example Response:

 
masnun@ubuntu:~$ cd random
masnun@ubuntu:~/random$ php gpsoap.php
object(stdClass)#2 (1) {
  ["SendSMSResponse"]=>
  object(stdClass)#3 (2) {
    ["status"]=>
    string(2) "OK"
    ["msgID"]=>
    string(17) "20100204183047653"
  }
}
masnun@ubuntu:~/random$

I am amazed to see the implementation of cron jobs on Google App Engine. I was hosting my twitter bots on my paid shared hosting. My scripts were written in php and they were run via cron jobs set from my cPanel. Of course the cPanel cron UI is now quite familiar to me, to us who use it very often. But as a matter of fact, I can’t run per minute cron on my host. I should have a minimum interval of 15 minutes between two execution of the same cron job. I was amazed when I first discovered that Google App Engine lets me run cron every minute. Since they calculate my usage in different types of quotas, they hardly care about how often you schedule your cron. So, I decided to port my twitter bots to GAE and Python.

The idea was pretty simple. I already had a Yahoo! Pipe setup which mashes up multiple RSS feeds into one. My app will be collecting data from the pipe in JSON format. Then it’ll check the last tweeted entry and tweet the newer entries. Pretty straightforward algorithm. I registered a new application for my bots and started developing it on my local machine.

I integrated the u.nu url shortening service with their API quite easily. Though Python 2.6.2 has a built in module for JSON handling, Python 2.5 doesn’t have it. So, I had to install simplejson for JSON decoding. Later, I moved on to finding a good twitter client for my app. I first tried python-twitter. I have previously used it and it worked fine. But the application was generating some error messages when I integrated into GAE. I was puzzled and tried to find if there was something wrong in my coding. After about an hour, I concluded that my code was okay! There’s something wrong with the client. A bit of googling revealed that “python-twitter” doesn’t work on GAE without any hacks :’(. I had to find an alternative and I chose tweepy for that. It was working fine with the app.

Finally after 3 hours, the app was ready and it’s working! GAE doesn’t permit long execution period for a process, so I had to decrease the amount of tweets per request. But I covered that up by setting a more frequent cron job . I would try the new taskqueue API soon to see if that has any help for my app.

My twitter bots have proved handy in the past and it feels great that I can host them on a scalable and efficient platform like Google App Engine — without paying a single dollar per month!

Download Source : http://masnun.googlecode.com/files/Twitter_BOT_GAE.zip

inbound_services:
- xmpp_message

to your app.yaml file. That would activate the service for our application. Have a look at my application’s app.yaml file:

 
application: masnun-test
version: 3
runtime: python
api_version: 1
 
handlers:
- url: .*
  script: masnun.py
 
inbound_services:
- xmpp_message

Now, we have the app configured, we need to do the actual coding. Every GAE app has it’s own IM id: [application_id]@appspot.com There are other extensive IDs also available but for this task we will use this format. So, my app has the ID: masnun-test@appspot.com as it’s Jabber / Google Talk ID. If the user adds this ID to his/her contact list, it’ll auto accept the friend invitation and appear online. Now when he/she sends a message, the message is sent as a POST request to the url: /_ah/xmpp/message/chat/ . This URL is not publicly accessible without admin rights. Our app can handle this URL like any other URL. So we need to setup a request handler for any POST request to this URL.

GAE has a nice API for it’s XMPP service which lets us build a Message object directly from the POSTed data. We will do that. Extract the message parts and send a response back. Here is source code for “masnun.py”:

#!/usr/bin/env python
 
import cgi
from google.appengine.api import xmpp
from google.appengine.ext import webapp
from google.appengine.ext.webapp.util import run_wsgi_app
 
class XMPPHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
    def post(self):
        message = xmpp.Message(self.request.POST)
        sender = cgi.escape(self.request.get('from')).split("/")[0]
        body = message.body
        message.reply("Hello, " + sender + "!, you sent: " + message.body)
 
application = webapp.WSGIApplication([('/_ah/xmpp/message/chat/', XMPPHandler)],
                                     debug=True)
 
def main():
    run_wsgi_app(application)
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

 
import json,urllib
data = urllib.urlopen("http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=a0b9e3295664870ee81711aed6f7ecd6&_render=json").read()
d = json.loads(data)
for x in d['value']['items']:
    print x['title']

Output:

masnun@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ python jsontest.py
Sms Plugin
..........
[SNIP]
..........
Profit Spreadsheet
Graphic Web Des. Needed Fast
Customer Ordering Website
Dating Site Profiles
masnun@ubuntu:~/Desktop$

I was using WordPress for my personal website for a long time. I was always interested in the WP API. But somehow I couldn’t make up my mind to do something with the API. Hasin vai inspired me a lot to work on WordPress. Finally, on a good day, I managed to build my first WP plugin — “gaf-text-link”. The plugin was featured by GAF and is available from the affiliates page of GAF (Now, freelancer.com). GAF paid me $100 appreciating my work as a marketing of their service. I was damn motivated to work on WordPress again — because of the money. Whenever I looked at the job listing at my favorite free lance sites, WP related projects were available in a large numbers and many of them involved good price My desire to work with WP grew.

I later created another plugin to integrate admob ads into WP. Hasin Vai one day gave me links to a bunch of nice of books on WP. They were great and I really learnt a lot. I coded up my first WP theme which was being used on this site until yesterday night.

From yesterday, I started working to improve my design skills. I started with WP theme design so that I can gather knowledge on two topics from a single work. I have got decent command over CSS based styling now, but I am still falling short in layout designing. My design last night was not up to mark, at least it was not what I wanted. Hasin vai suggested me to use a CSS framework for layout. I had two primary options — fluid.gs for fluid layout and 960.gs for fixed width layout. I chose 960.gs since I wanted my layout to be fixed width. It was cool working with it. It saved me a lot of time and let me do what I really wanted to do! I am not willing to use raw CSS for layout again

Not only CSS and HTML, I have also worked with GIMP for bit of image editing. I am very new to GIMP. Had to struggle a bit with the interface. I hope I will be able to cope up really soon.

I finished the theme just a few hours ago. I made it widget-ready this time. It’s not bad for me! I will keep digging with designs and see if I can come with something better

To start the server, just use this command:

python server.py

Source Code:

 
from BaseHTTPServer import HTTPServer, BaseHTTPRequestHandler
import os,glob
 
class RequestHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def do_GET(self):
        fpath = os.path.join(os.getcwd(),self.path[1:])
        response = ""
        if os.path.isfile(fpath):
                response = open(fpath,"rb").read()
                if fpath[-3:] == 'php':
                    response = os.popen("php5 -f " + fpath).read()
                if fpath[-2:] == 'py':
                    response = os.popen("python " + fpath).read()
                if fpath[-3:] == 'pyc':
                    response = os.popen("python " + fpath).read()
        elif os.path.isdir(fpath):
                dirlist = glob.glob(fpath + "/*")
                response = "<html><head><title>Directory Listing of " + os.path.basename(fpath) + "</title><head>"
                response += "<body>"
                for x in dirlist:
                    response += "<a href=\"" + os.path.basename(x) + "\">" + os.path.basename(x) + "</a><br />"
                response += "</body></html>"
 
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header("Content-type","text/html")
        self.end_headers()
        self.wfile.write(str(response))
 
httpd = HTTPServer(('',7676),RequestHandler)
httpd.serve_forever()

I love you, Python!

Here’s the source codes:

 
<?php
 
function reflect($data,$return = false) {
    $string = "\n \nReflecting: {$data} \n";
    $string .= "\n====================\n";
    if(is_object($data)) {
        $string .= Reflection::export( new ReflectionClass($data), true );
        $string .= "\n====================\n";
    } else {
        if(function_exists($data)) {
            $string .= Reflection::export( new ReflectionFunction($data), true );
            $string .= "\n====================\n";
        }
    }
 
    if($return) {
        return $string;
    } else {
        echo $string;
    }
 
}
?>

Here’s the source:

<?php
$topic = $argv[1];
if(empty ($topic)) {
    $topic = "php";
}
$username = "twitter_username";
$password = "twitter_password";
$fp = fopen("http://{$username}:{$password}@stream.twitter.com/1/statuses/filter.json?track={$topic}","r");
while( $data = fgets($fp) ) {
    $tweet = json_decode($data,true);
    if(!empty($tweet['text'])) {
        echo $tweet['user']['screen_name'].": ".$tweet['text']." \n -------------------- \n";
    }
}
?>

Run this script with the keyword as the argument:

php twitter.php keyword

Well, I am going to cover Python for the Twitter streaming API. You need the “tweetstream” python module which depends on the “anyjson” module. Please make sure you have these modules installed before you proceed.

Download Links: anyjson | tweetstream

To install these packages, use the built in setup.py of the individual packages :

sudo python setup.py install

In my case, I didn’t have the “setuptools” python module installed with my default python installation. So I had to install it to get the setup.py work:

sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

I love the magic of debian packages

Now, you can install the modules and dive into our example:

 
#! /usr/bin/env python
 
import tweetstream
 
stream = tweetstream.TweetStream("twitter_username", "twitter_password")
 
for tweet in stream:
    if tweet.has_key("text"):
        print tweet['user']['screen_name'] + ": " + tweet['text'] , "\n"
        print "-----" * 4

That’s it! In real, you get the stream dictionary which you can use to manipulate the tweets.

The “tweetstream” module also lets you access the Track and Follow APIs in a superb fashion!

I love Twitter, I love Python!