/craigsuck

Python script that periodically probes the Craigslist RSS feeds for new listings.

Primary LanguagePythonOtherNOASSERTION

craigsuck: A Craigslist RSS poller.

Copyright (c) 2010 Jake Brukhman. (jbrukh@gmail.com)

Periodically checks a Craigslist RSS feed for listings and pipes them to output. See the legacy craigslist-mailer tags (1.0.x) for e-mail functionality.

Installation

  • craigsuck depends on BeautifulSoup. See this page for Mac instructions.

Motivation

Sometimes one desires to keep abreast of craigslist postings in real-time. One application is apartment listings in large cities, such as New York, where reading a listing early might confer a particular advantage on the apartment seeker. Real-time postings can also be filtered and the user notified of certain goings-on of interest -- such as Missed Connections posts that mention a "green scarf".

To aid in this process, craigsuck provides a commandline way of keeping track of incoming listings in perpetuity. It polls the craigslist RSS feed for a particular page and sends you the new additions every polling period.

Usage

Navigate to the Craigslist page you'd like to keep an eye on and copy the URL. Examples:

Give a list of URLS to craigsuck, for instance:

./craigsuck "http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/aap/"

To change the output format, you can specify it using the --format option. Format is given in Python templates style, with link, title, or date as possible parameters.

./craigsuck --format "${date} - ${title}" "http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/aap/"

See --help for details.