Blake Carver wrote:

> What is this line doing?
>                 item_date = item.get('created_parsed',
> item.get('date_parsed', ()))
>
> What I *think* it should be doing is something like item_date is equal to
> 'modified_parsed, or 'date_parsed', or 'created_parsed' Am I thinking
> wrong on that?

Nope, you're right.  The syntax:

   foo.get('key', default)

...is a standard "safe" way of getting the value of key 'key' from the
dictionary 'foo'.  If there's no key named 'key', it returns default.

The code above says:  "return the value of key 'created_parsed' from the
dictionary 'item', or if that key doesn't exist, return the value of key
'date_parsed' from dict 'item', or if that key doesn't exist, return an
empty tuple.  It's a little awkward.


> I'm also unlcear this line, why does this need to be done, and why is it
> failing?
>                 if isinstance(item_date, time.struct_time) and
> len(item_date) == 9:

This checks that the value we got up above matches the value type
specified, and is actually nine items long.  That's strange... the
time.struct_time type itself should always be nine items long, I think.

Checking a local copy of feedparser-3.3 (its download site isn't
responding just now) I don't see the bits you're quoting, and the
strategy for handling these possible values has changed.  Is it possible
that the version you're using is older, and that a newer one might fix
things?

   -Dan


--
Daniel Chudnov
Yale Center for Medical Informatics
(203) 737-5789