How to display the "%" in python ?

I saw something interesting on the internet.
How to display the "%" in python.
I found so far two methods:

>>> print "See %d%%" % (0.77 * 100) 
See 77%
>>> print "See {0:.0%}".format(0.77)
See 77%
>>> 

Where is Santa Claus?

I wrote a python module. I called it "geo" because it is a geographic module.
The funny stuff is when i use it with "Santa Claus".

>>> import geo 
>>> geo.adress("Santa Claus")
{'status': '200', 'latitude': '32.1715776', 'longitude': '-82.3315138', 'accuracy': '4'}

So where is Santa Claus ?!
Google Maps API should be prepared to respond.
Tomorrow a child will know how to use the Python language.
Who knows ...

Parsing feeds - part 1

From time to time I used conky. Is good for me, because i have all i need on my desktop.
How helped me python in this case?
For example i use one script to parse a feed from this url:
"http://www.bnro.ro/nbrfxrates.xml"
The example is simple to understand :

from xml.dom import minidom as dom
import urllib
def fetchPage(url):
a = urllib.urlopen(url)
return ''.join(a.readlines())

def extract(webpage):
a = dom.parseString(webpage)
item2 = a.getElementsByTagName('SendingDate')[0].firstChild.wholeText
print "DATA ",item2
item = a.getElementsByTagName('Cube')
for i in item:
if i.hasChildNodes() == True:
eur = i.getElementsByTagName('Rate')[10].firstChild.wholeText
dol = i.getElementsByTagName('Rate')[26].firstChild.wholeText
print "EURO  ",eur
print "DOLAR ",dol

if __name__=='__main__':
webpage = fetchPage("http://www.bnro.ro/nbrfxrates.xml")
extract(webpage)

The result is:

$python xmlparse.py
DATA  2010-02-04
EURO   4.1214
DOLAR  2.9749

With "urllib" package I read the url.
The result is parsing with functions from "dom" package.
I used this functions "parseString" and "getElementsByTagName".
More about this functions you will see on:
http://docs.python.org/library/xml.dom.minidom.html
This is all.

How to resize images .

Sometimes it is necessary to resize the images. The PIL module is used for image processing.The glob module takes a wildcard and returns the full path of all files and directories matching the wildcard.
Here are two scripts that I made.
The first is a simple example using a resize after some dimensions.
In this case we used size 300x300.

from PIL import Image
import glob, os
size_file = 300,300
for f in glob.glob("*.png"):
   file, ext = os.path.splitext(f)
   img = Image.open(f)
   img.thumbnail(size_file, Image.ANTIALIAS)
   img.save("thumb_" + file, "JPEG")

In the second case I tried to do a resize with proportion preservation.

import glob 
import PIL
from PIL import Image
for f in glob.glob("*.jpg"):
 img = Image.open(f)
 dim_percent=(100/float(img.size[0]))
 dim_size=int((float(img.size[1])*float(dim_percent)))
 img = img.resize((100,dim_size),PIL.Image.ANTIALIAS)
 if f[0:2] != "trumb_":
  img.save("thumb_" + f, "JPEG")

In both cases we use a renaming of files by adding the name of "thumb_".
Ambele scripturi pot fi modificate asa cum vreti.
Aceste scripturi demonstreaza cum sa folosim celor doua module "PIL" si "globe".

New book for kids with Python 3

Few days ago i found a new site about python .
I saw on this site the a new book about python for kids .
This is the link "Snake Wrangling for Kids".
The author says:

• “Snake Wrangling for Kids” is a printable electronic book, for children 8 years and older, who would like to learn computer programming. It covers the very basics of programming, and uses the Python 3

GTK - get display resolution

Sometime is need to get the display resolution.
This python code show how to do it:

>>> import gtk
>>> dgd=gtk.gdk.display_get_default()
>>> gsd=dgd.get_default_screen()
>>> height=gsd.get_height()
>>> width=gsd.get_width()
>>> print "height=",height,"width=",width
height= 1024 width= 1280

Quite simply ...