Python Forum

Hello,

For some reason, the following Python script that runs every hour through cron stops after the first run in the loop after downloading the RSS feed:

#!/usr/bin/python3

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import requests
import datetime as dt
from datetime import datetime

URL="https://www.acme.com/feed/"
resp = requests.get(URL)
soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text,'xml')

print("<!doctype html>")
print('<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head>')
print('<body><h1>Acme.com RSS feed</h1><ul>')
for item in soup("item"):
        #Thu, 10 Nov 2022 18:15:41 +0000
        date_obj = dt.datetime.strptime(item.pubDate.string, "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z")
        pubDate = "{} {} {}".format(date_obj.day,date_obj.strftime("%b"),date_obj.year)

        link=item.link.string
        title=item.title.string
        print("<li><a href='{}'>{} - {}</a></li>".format(link,title,pubDate))
print("</ul>")

now = datetime.now()
date_time = now.strftime("%d/%m//%Y %H:%M")
print("Last updated: ",date_time)

print("</body></html>")

Here's crontab:
0 * * * * /root/feed.py > /usr/share/nginx/mysite/feed.html

And here's the outputt:
<!doctype html>
<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head>
<body><h1>Acme.com RSS feed</h1><ul>
<li><a href='https://www.acme.com/2022/11/15/latest-article/'>Latest article - 15 Nov 2022</a></li>

Any idea what it could be? I see nothing in /var/log/messsages.

Thank you.

It looks good to me. You say there is nothing in /var/log/messsages. Did you also inspect /var/log/syslog?
You can force error messages also to be sent to your output file by appending " 2>&1 ". (Meaning: send stderr (2) to stdout (1).) like this:

Quote:0 * * * * /root/feed.py > /usr/share/nginx/mysite/feed.html 2>&1

Perhaps an error message appears in your output to help you understand what is happening.

Sorry, I forgot to say: The script was OK when run manually.

But indeed, logging off and back on displayed this error…

-bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (UTF-8" or "en_US.UTF-8)

… which was solved by editing /etc/default/locale to go back to its original state…

LANG="C"
#BAD LANG="UTF-8" or "en_US.UTF-8"
#BAD LC_ALL="UTF-8" or "en_US.UTF-8"
#BAD LC_CTYPE="UTF-8" or "en_US.UTF-8"

… which also solved the cron issue.

Thank you.

Winfried

ibreeden

Winfried