4chapy

A simple library for accessing 4chan's JSON API.

Features

• Simple and easy to use
• Built-in request rate throttling ensures that you won't accidently get your IP banned due to request flooding. See the API rules for details about max request rates (https://github.com/4chan/4chan-API#api-rules)
• Lazy fetching - The 4chapy API will not try to fetch data from 4chan's servers until your app requests data that it doesn't already have. This helps ensure that your app is not making unnecessary requests which would slow down your app and increase load on 4chan's servers for no reason.

Using 4chapy - From the bottom up

# Import the library
from Fourchapy import BoardIndex
# Download a list of all boards and basic info about them (via http)
b = BoardIndex()
# Look over the first two boards only
for board in b.Boards[:2]:
	# Watch out for the unicode
	print u"Board %s (%s)" % (board.Board, board.BoardName)
	if board.SafeForWork:
		print "Safe for work"
	else:
		print "Not safe for work"
	# Get the first two pages only
	for page in board.getPages(maxPage = 1):
		print "Looking at page %d of board %r" % (page.Page, board.Board)
		# Get the first two threads only
		for thread in page.Threads[:2]:
			print "---- Thread %d ----" % thread.Thread
			for post in thread.Posts:
				print "--- %d ---" % post.Number
				print "Subject: %r" % post.Subject
				print "Comment: %r" % post.Comment

Using 4chapy - If you know the board and thread you want

# Import the library
from Fourchapy import Thread
# Download a thread from diy with an ID of 12345
t = Thread(boardID = 'diy', threadID = 12345)
# Loop over all posts in the thread and print out info from the post
for post in t.Posts:
	print "--- %d ---"%post.Number
	print "Subject: %s"%post.Subject
	print "Comment: %s"%post.Comment

Simple Example Using Only Python 2.6 Built-in Libraries

# Import standard libraries 
from urllib import urlopen
from json import loads
from pprint import pprint
# Open the thread's JSON data URL and read data from the connection
f=urlopen(url = '%s://api.4chan.org/%s/res/%d.json' % ('http', 'diy', 12345))
data=f.read()
f.close()
# Convert JSON into Python data structures
decoded=loads(data)
# Display the data
pprint(decoded)

4chapy Testing Steps

1. Copy "Test.conf.ini.sample" to "Test.conf.ini"
2. Edit "Test.conf.ini" and validate that the logging level is acceptable. 1=Super Debug, 10=Debug, etc
3. Edit "Test.conf.ini" and validate that the four RecursiveOptions are set low. The number of HTTP(S) requests made to 4chan's servers PER TEST is the first three values multiplied by each other.
4. Run "/src/Fourchapy/tests/init.py" with no args. The script's working directory should be the same folder where "Test.conf.ini" is located.