Python Standard Library

The nntplib Module

The nntplib module provides a Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) client implementation.

Listing messages

Prior to reading messages from a news server, you have to connect to the server and then select a newsgroup. The script in Example 7-32 also downloads a complete list of all messages on the server and extracts some more or less interesting statistics from that list.

Example 7-32. Using the nntplib Module to List Messages

File: nntplib-example-1.py

import nntplib
import string

SERVER = "news.spam.egg"
GROUP  = "comp.lang.python" 
AUTHOR = "[e-mail]" # eff-bots human alias

# connect to server
server = nntplib.NNTP(SERVER)

# choose a newsgroup
resp, count, first, last, name = server.group(GROUP)
print "count", "=>", count
print "range", "=>", first, last

# list all items on the server
resp, items = server.xover(first, last)

# extract some statistics
authors = {}
subjects = {}
for id, subject, author, date, message_id, references, size, lines in items:
    authors[author] = None
    if subject[:4] == "Re: ":
        subject = subject[4:]
    subjects[subject] = None
    if string.find(author, AUTHOR) >= 0:
        print id, subject
    
print "authors", "=>", len(authors)
print "subjects", "=>", len(subjects)

count => 607
range => 57179 57971
57474 Three decades of Python!
...
57477 More Python books coming...
authors => 257
subjects => 200

Downloading Messages

Downloading a message is easy. Just call the article method, as shown in Example 7-33.

Example 7-33. Using the nntplib Module ...