Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 48 posts

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#21

Post by scrumper »

I use Python to suck structured data out of our sales CRM's REST API and transform it into a nicely formatted narrative biweekly report in Excel for exec management. Pleasingly, it's reduced the aggregate time the sales team spends "writing about work" from about 80 hours a month to under 20. Subsequently I've extended that script to also automate the process around reminding relevant people about expiring legal agreements and the like.

Using Python 2.7, BeautifulSoup, XLSXWriter, Fuzzy Fuzzy. As a Python newbie, the hardest thing was working out how to even pick a version and an environment to start building on.

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#22

Post by scrumper »

d0lph wrote: post #2

I have a script that logs into my bank's web interface, and extracts my current balance. I subtract out my upcoming bills/savings transactions to tell me how much money I can spend until my next paycheck. My next step is to have it email the amount spendable every morning. I'm using python 3, selenium, and SQLAlchemy connected to a home MySQL server.

This is a good idea and it's on my very long nice-to-have list. How are you driving the browser? Some sort of UI testing library? My bank has no API so it'd have to screen scrape.

EDIT: Sorry, I can see that it says it right there in your post: Selenium. Leaving up my stupid question as a marker of shame.

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#24

Post by awshepard »

My last company used Atlassian Stash and switched from a single project and monorepo to lots of projects and repos. I wrote a python script that uses the Stash API (via the stashy library) to update or clone selected (or all, including new) repositories.

I used it fairly regularly to keep my local repos up to date, and I know one developer who used it to generate gource visualizations.

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#26

Post by peterdemin »

d0lph wrote: post #2

I have a script that logs into my bank's web interface, and extracts my current balance. I subtract out my upcoming bills/savings transactions to tell me how much money I can spend until my next paycheck. My next step is to have it email the amount spendable every morning. I'm using python 3, selenium, and SQLAlchemy connected to a home MySQL server.

Check out https://peterdemin.github.io/kibitzr-banks.html It does almost the same

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#27

Post by [deleted] »

d0lph wrote: post #2

I have a script that logs into my bank's web interface, and extracts my current balance. I subtract out my upcoming bills/savings transactions to tell me how much money I can spend until my next paycheck. My next step is to have it email the amount spendable every morning. I'm using python 3, selenium, and SQLAlchemy connected to a home MySQL server.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

d0lph wrote: post #2

I have a script that logs into my bank's web interface, and extracts my current balance. I subtract out my upcoming bills/savings transactions to tell me how much money I can spend until my next paycheck. My next step is to have it email the amount spendable every morning. I'm using python 3, selenium, and SQLAlchemy connected to a home MySQL server.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#29

Post by w_t_payne »

I've automated my build-test-commit workflow. My build script commits my changes at the beginning of the build. If the build or any of the tests fail, then the commit is rolled back, otherwise it is squashed together with other edits ready to be pushed. I automatically get a complete record of builds (in the reflog), and a fairly neat (if somewhat coarse-grained) history of changes with perfect traceability in my commit messages.
Post reply on HN