This challenge write-up first appeared on PyBites.

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. - A. Einstein

Hi Pythonistas, it has been silent on the Community Blog challenges front, but then again we completed the 100 Days of Code in Python course which was a great milestone. Although less frequent, we will however, keep doing blog challenges so not to worry! Let's start with a long pending item: cleaning up Python planets feeds, an interesting and valuable open source contribution.

The Challenge

See issue 233: there are a lot of feeds that are invalid or outdated. For this Challenge you're to write a script that does the cleaning as per requirements stated in the issue:

• Run weekly or monthly
• Iterate all urls on config.ini and also python libraries and python planets list
• Call each URL and assert (following redirects) -
  • Check return code is 200
  • Check data of last update is newer than one year
  • Check feed is valid using feedvalidator/podcastvalidator/othervalidator
• If not valid, store the URL in a simple database (text file, sqlite or something)
  • ACTION: If link returns bad status\invalid 3 times, remove from planet
  • ACTION: If feed is outdated for more than one year, keep in planet but remove from sidebar
  • ACTION: If feed is updated and not in sidebar, put it there again

Bonus

Ours and potentially a lot of other feeds are not showing up due to what seems to be an SSL issue. Can you solve it and make a lot of Pythonistas happy? Check our inital debugging on issue 135 and feel free to chime in (be warned though: might require some very old Python 2.x ...)

Credit

Ready to contribute to this important Python news app? PR your work via our platform - valid PRs will receive our cool PyBites Contributor Badge added to their dashboards.

We are moving the review posts to a featured view on our platform (audience > 1800 users and growing), PR and standby ...

PyBites Community

A few more things before we take off:

• Do you want to discuss this challenge and share your Pythonic journey with other passionate Pythonistas? Confirm your email on our platform then request access to our Slack via settings.

• PyBites is here to challenge you because becoming a better Pythonista requires practice, a lot of it. For any feedback, issues or ideas use GH Issues, tweet us or ping us on our Slack.

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Keep Calm and Code in Python!