matthewheston / yaktrak Goto Github PK

A collection of scripts for collecting YikYak data.

1. To create MySQL databases, run ddl.sql script within the data directory.
2. For each location you wish to retrieve yaks from, insert a row into the locations table. Populate the latitude and longitude fields for the desired location. You should use the name field to give a textual identifier to the location. You'll pass this name as an argument to the script to collect yaks for that location.

Rename database.cfg.example to database.cfg. Update the fields within that file to point to your MySQL database.

Run yaktrak.py passing in the name of a location in your locations table to retrieve the last 100 yaks for that location and save them to your database.

python yaktrak.py utaustin

assumes you have a row in your locations table with the name field set to 'utaustin'.

Each yak comes across the wire with an associated latitude and longitude of where it was posted. YakTrak does not store this information. While we associate a yak with a particular location in the locations table, we do not store the specific latitude/longitude it was posted from with the yak itself.

The bulk of the work here is done by pyak, a script built as a sort of API around Yik Yak. The initial pyak repository has been removed from GitHub, though some forks are floating around both on here as well as pastebin, and a small community of people having discussions around the internet to keep that script functioning. Without having a more formal way of thanking them, they saved me from a lot of headaches.