Request - How to exclude images from news fetched?

[yinsyuedu]

Hi,

I am new to Calibre and I find it a very powerful software. I am a regular reader of The Economist and am using Calibre to download the newspaper.

However, I don't like pictures associated with the news articles as they seem to make the file size very big (about 3.5 mb/issue – I am assuming it is the images that are increasing the file size). I prefer smaller sizes of files because I do not want my Kindle to fill up quickly.

So I was wondering if anyone could be so kind as to tell me how to tweak the programming codes to exclude images from being downloaded. I would like to give it a try myself first, but I possess no knowledge on programming. Looking at the codes, I have no idea what I should do, even though I took a look at the user manual section on advanced code editing. I have pasted below the Calibre source codes for The Economist. If someone could help me with my request, I'd very much appreciate it.

Thanks!

--------------------------

#!/usr/bin/env python

__license__ = 'GPL v3'
__copyright__ = '2008, Kovid Goyal <kovid at kovidgoyal.net>'
'''
economist.com
'''
from calibre.web.feeds.news import BasicNewsRecipe
from calibre.ebooks.BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
from calibre.ebooks.BeautifulSoup import Tag, NavigableString

import string, time, re

class Economist(BasicNewsRecipe):

title = 'The Economist'
language = 'en'

__author__ = "Kovid Goyal"
INDEX = 'http://www.economist.com/printedition'
description = ('Global news and current affairs from a European'
' perspective. Best downloaded on Friday mornings (GMT)')
extra_css = '.headline {font-size: x-large;} \n h2 { font-size: small; } \n h1 { font-size: medium; }'
oldest_article = 7.0
cover_url = 'http://www.economist.com/images/covers/currentcoverus_large.jpg'
remove_tags = [
dict(name=['script', 'noscript', 'title', 'iframe', 'cf_floatingcontent']),
dict(attrs={'class':['dblClkTrk', 'ec-article-info', 'share_inline_header']}),
{'class': lambda x: x and 'share-links-header' in x},
]
keep_only_tags = [dict(id='ec-article-body')]
needs_subscription = False
no_stylesheets = True
preprocess_regexps = [(re.compile('</html>.*', re.DOTALL),
lambda x:'</html>')]

'''
def get_browser(self):
br = BasicNewsRecipe.get_browser()
br.open('http://www.economist.com')
req = mechanize.Request(
'http://www.economist.com/members/members.cfm?act=exec_login',
headers = {
'Referer':'http://www.economist.com/',
},
data=urllib.urlencode({
'logging_in' : 'Y',
'returnURL' : '/',
'email_address': self.username,
'fakepword' : 'Password',
'pword' : self.password,
'x' : '0',
'y' : '0',
}))
br.open(req).read()
return br
'''

def parse_index(self):
try:
return self.economist_parse_index()
except:
raise
self.log.warn(
'Initial attempt to parse index failed, retrying in 30 seconds')
time.sleep(30)
return self.economist_parse_index()

def economist_parse_index(self):
soup = BeautifulSoup(self.browser.open(self.INDEX).read() ,
convertEntities=BeautifulSoup.HTML_ENTITIES)
index_started = False
feeds = {}
ans = []
key = None
for tag in soup.findAll(['h1', 'h2']):
text = ''.join(tag.findAll(text=True))
if tag.name in ('h1', 'h2') and 'Classified ads' in text:
break
if tag.name == 'h1':
if 'The world this week' in text or 'The world this year' in text:
index_started = True
if not index_started:
continue
text = string.capwords(text)
if text not in feeds.keys():
feeds[text] = []
if text not in ans:
ans.append(text)
key = text
continue
if key is None:
continue
a = tag.find('a', href=True)
if a is not None:
url=a['href']
id_ = re.search(r'story_id=(\d+)', url).group(1)
url = 'http://www.economist.com/node/%s/print'%id_
if url.startswith('Printer'):
url = '/'+url
if url.startswith('/'):
url = 'http://www.economist.com' + url
try:
subtitle = tag.previousSibling.contents[0].contents[0]
text = subtitle + ': ' + text
except:
pass
article = dict(title=text,
url = url,
description='', content='', date='')
feeds[key].append(article)

ans = [(key, feeds[key]) for key in ans if feeds.has_key(key)]
if not ans:
raise Exception('Could not find any articles. Has your subscription expired?')
return ans

def eco_find_image_tables(self, soup):
for x in soup.findAll('table', align=['right', 'center']):
if len(x.findAll('font')) in (1,2) and len(x.findAll('img')) == 1:
yield x

def postprocess_html(self, soup, first):
body = soup.find('body')
for name, val in body.attrs:
del body[name]

for table in list(self.eco_find_image_tables(soup)):
caption = table.find('font')
img = table.find('img')
div = Tag(soup, 'div')
div['style'] = 'text-align:left;font-size:70%'
ns = NavigableString(self.tag_to_string(caption))
div.insert(0, ns)
div.insert(1, Tag(soup, 'br'))
del img['width']
del img['height']
img.extract()
div.insert(2, img)
table.replaceWith(div)
return soup

[SteliosGero]

I hope this works for you.
To remove images you need to add 'img' to the excluded tags.

#!/usr/bin/env  python

__license__   = 'GPL v3'
__copyright__ = '2008, Kovid Goyal <kovid at kovidgoyal.net>'
'''
economist.com
'''
from calibre.web.feeds.news import BasicNewsRecipe
from calibre.ebooks.BeautifulSoup import Tag, NavigableString
from collections import OrderedDict

import time, re

class Economist(BasicNewsRecipe):

    title = 'The Economist'
    language = 'en'

    __author__ = "Kovid Goyal"
    INDEX = 'http://www.economist.com/printedition'
    description = ('Global news and current affairs from a European'
            ' perspective. Best downloaded on Friday mornings (GMT)')
    extra_css      = '.headline {font-size: x-large;} \n h2 { font-size: small;  } \n h1 { font-size: medium;  }'
    oldest_article = 7.0
    remove_tags = [
            dict(name=['img', 'script', 'noscript', 'title', 'iframe', 'cf_floatingcontent']),
            dict(attrs={'class':['dblClkTrk', 'ec-article-info',
                'share_inline_header', 'related-items']}),
            {'class': lambda x: x and 'share-links-header' in x},
    ]
    keep_only_tags = [dict(id='ec-article-body')]
    needs_subscription = False
    no_stylesheets = True
    preprocess_regexps = [(re.compile('</html>.*', re.DOTALL),
        lambda x:'</html>')]

    # economist.com has started throttling after about 60% of the total has
    # downloaded with connection reset by peer (104) errors.
    delay = 1

    def get_cover_url(self):
        br = self.browser
        br.open(self.INDEX)
        issue = br.geturl().split('/')[4]
        self.log('Fetching cover for issue: %s'%issue)
        cover_url = "http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/print-cover-full/print-covers/%s_CNA400.jpg" %(issue.translate(None,'-'))
        return cover_url


    def parse_index(self):
        try:
            return self.economist_parse_index()
        except:
            raise
            self.log.warn(
                'Initial attempt to parse index failed, retrying in 30 seconds')
            time.sleep(30)
            return self.economist_parse_index()

    def economist_parse_index(self):
        soup = self.index_to_soup(self.INDEX)
        div = soup.find('div', attrs={'class':'issue-image'})
        if div is not None:
            img = div.find('img', src=True)
            if img is not None:
                self.cover_url = img['src']
        feeds = OrderedDict()
        for section in soup.findAll(attrs={'class':lambda x: x and 'section' in
            x}):
            h4 = section.find('h4')
            if h4 is None:
                continue
            section_title = self.tag_to_string(h4).strip()
            if not section_title:
                continue
            self.log('Found section: %s'%section_title)
            articles = []
            subsection = ''
            for node in section.findAll(attrs={'class':'article'}):
                subsec = node.findPreviousSibling('h5')
                if subsec is not None:
                    subsection = self.tag_to_string(subsec)
                prefix = (subsection+': ') if subsection else ''
                a = node.find('a', href=True)
                if a is not None:
                    url = a['href']
                    if url.startswith('/'): url = 'http://www.economist.com'+url
                    url += '/print'
                    title = self.tag_to_string(a)
                    if title:
                        title = prefix + title
                        self.log('\tFound article:', title)
                        articles.append({'title':title, 'url':url,
                        'description':'', 'date':''})

            if articles:
                if section_title not in feeds:
                    feeds[section_title] = []
                feeds[section_title] += articles

        ans = [(key, val) for key, val in feeds.iteritems()]
        if not ans:
            raise Exception('Could not find any articles, either the '
                    'economist.com server is having trouble and you should '
                    'try later or the website format has changed and the '
                    'recipe needs to be updated.')
        return ans

    def eco_find_image_tables(self, soup):
        for x in soup.findAll('table', align=['right', 'center']):
            if len(x.findAll('font')) in (1,2) and len(x.findAll('img')) == 1:
                yield x

    def postprocess_html(self, soup, first):
        body = soup.find('body')
        for name, val in body.attrs:
            del body[name]

        for table in list(self.eco_find_image_tables(soup)):
            caption = table.find('font')
            img = table.find('img')
            div = Tag(soup, 'div')
            div['style'] = 'text-align:left;font-size:70%'
            ns = NavigableString(self.tag_to_string(caption))
            div.insert(0, ns)
            div.insert(1, Tag(soup, 'br'))
            del img['width']
            del img['height']
            img.extract()
            div.insert(2, img)
            table.replaceWith(div)
        return soup