reddit_crawl
A command line tool that uses the Reddit API to track popularity of a keyword. The tool is currently focused on tracking developer technologies, such as programming languages, frameworks or IDEs.
Installation
- Make sure you have Dart installed and it's in your path.
- Run
pub global activate reddit_crawl
.
Example usage
To get data for "dart" for the past 3 months (default), run this:
$ reddit_crawl dart
This will fetch the data and it will create 2 sets of files in the current working directory:
- output-dart-2018-01-01 (.json and .tsv) with the results of this run
- This is useful for 'point in time' view and for backup of previous runs.
- output-dart-all (.json and .tsv) with the results of this run merged with
whatever was there previously
- This is your 'tracking' output that you can update with latest Reddit buzz as time progresses.
The JSON files include all the data received from Reddit API. The TSV file is useful for copypasting into spreadsheets and includes only a subset of the data and some helper columns.
Advanced usage
Run the tool without parameters to get help.
$ reddit_crawl
Exactly one argument is requred: a name of a technology.
Additional options:
-v, --verbose Verbose mode.
--months Number of months to crawl in reverse chronological order.
(defaults to "3")
--mobile Use additional subreddits that specialize in mobile development.
--web Use additional subreddits that specialize in web development.
To get all mentions of "vim" on major Reddit programming forums, including mobile- and web-focused ones, from the past 6 years (6 * 12 = 72 months), use:
$ reddit_crawl --months 72 --mobile --web vim
Later, you can just run reddit_crawl --mobile --web vim
to update your
output-vim-all
files with the latest submissions.