Watch a specific petition (assumes you have toilet (figlet) installed

petition_watch.py

#!/usr/bin/python3
#
# This is a quick and dirty script to watch the petition, and back off when there's failures
# It also tries to resync back to checking once every 5 minutes.
# It also logs the data
# There's some hardcoded stuff. Deal with it.
#
# Accessing the json feed for this data is likely to be less disruptive.
#

import os
import requests
import sys
import time


def log(data):
    f = open("/home/michael/petition_data.log","a+")
    f.write(str(time.time()))
    f.write("|")
    f.write(str(time.asctime(time.localtime() ) ))
    f.write("|")
    f.write(str(data))
    f.write("\n")
    f.close()

def monitor_petition():

    result = requests.get("https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584.json")


    if result.status_code != 200:
        print("FAILED", time.time(), time.asctime(time.localtime()) )
        return False

    os.system("clear")
    data = result.json()

    sigs = str(data["data"]["attributes"]["signature_count"])
    log(sigs)

    print("Petition - https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584")
    print(data["data"]["attributes"]["action"])
    print()
    print(data["data"]["attributes"]["background"])
    print()

    os.system("toilet -f mono12 " + sigs)
    t = time.localtime(time.time())


    print('As of %02d:%02d %s signatures' % (t.tm_hour, t.tm_min, sigs) )
    os.system('espeak "As of %02d:%02d %s signatures"' % (t.tm_hour, t.tm_min, sigs) )

    return True


os.system("clear")

pref_delay = 300 # five minutes
sleep_time = pref_delay  # Current delay
back_off = 1.8
resync = 1.2
while True:
    result = monitor_petition()
    if result:
        if sleep_time > pref_delay:
            sleep_time = int(sleep_time/resync)
            print("resync:")
        if sleep_time < pref_delay:
            sleep_time =  pref_delay
    else:
        sleep_time = int(sleep_time * back_off)
        print("backoff:")

    print("------------------")
    os.system("tail -5 /home/michael/petition_data.log")
    print("------------------")
    print("sleep until:", sleep_time, time.asctime(time.localtime(time.time()+sleep_time)) )
    time.sleep(sleep_time)