coursewatch.py

import urllib
import urllib2
import cookielib
from html5lib import HTMLParser, treebuilders



def get_spaces_available(dept_abbr, course_num):
	# define
	post_data = {
		'classyear' : '2008', #don't know WHY!?!
		'subj': dept_abbr,
		'crsenum': course_num,
	}
	url = 'http://oracle-www.dartmouth.edu/dart/groucho/timetable.course_quicksearch'

	# get the html
	cj = cookielib.LWPCookieJar()
	opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cj))
	urllib2.install_opener(opener)
	headers =  {'User-agent' : 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT)'}
	request = urllib2.Request(url, urllib.urlencode(post_data), headers)
	handle = urllib2.urlopen(request)
	html = handle.read()

	# parse the html
	parser = HTMLParser(tree=treebuilders.getTreeBuilder("beautifulsoup"))
	soup = parser.parse(html)
	tbody = soup.find('th', text='Term').parent.parent.parent
	cells = tbody.findAll('tr')[2]('td')
	enrolled = int(cells[-2].contents[0])
	capacity = int(cells[-3].contents[0])

	print "%i spaces left (capacity of %i with %i enrolled)" % (capacity-enrolled, capacity, enrolled)