ratebeer.py

What is this?

RateBeer is a database of user-created reviews about beers and breweries. However, their API has been down for some time, making it difficult to get that information programmatically. This simplifies that process, allowing you to access it in the most painless way possible. Data is returned to you in a friendly, Pythonic way:

{'beers': [{'id': '61118',
        'name': u'21st Amendment Summit IPA',
        'num_ratings': u'4',
        'rating': u'',
        'url': '/beer/21st-amendment-summit-ipa/61118/'},
         {'id': '258783',
          'name': u'4T\x92s Summit Hoppy',
          'num_ratings': u'1',
          'rating': u'',
          'url': '/beer/4ts-summit-hoppy/258783/'},
         ....
         {'id': '170187',
          'name': u'Maumee Bay Summit Street Pale Ale',
          'num_ratings': u'3',
          'rating': u'',
          'url': '/beer/maumee-bay-summit-street-pale-ale/170187/'
        }],
  'breweries': [{'id': '1233',
            'location': u'St. Paul, Minnesota',
            'name': [u'Summit Brewing Company'],
            'url': '/brewers/summit-brewing-company/1233/'},
           ...
           {'id': '346',
            'location': u'Gaithersburg, Maryland',
            'name': [u'Summit Station Restaurant & Brewery'],
            'url': '/brewers/summit-station-restaurant-brewery/346/'}
          ]
  }

Why not BeerAdvocate.com?

Because they're evil, and they issue takedown notices left and right. We like RateBeer. Scratch that, we love RateBeer.

Requirements

Requires requests, beautifulsoup4, and lxml.

Installation

Use pip:

pip install ratebeer

Or clone the package:

git clone https://github.com/alilja/ratebeer.git

Usage

Because ratebeer doesn't use an API, no key is required. Simply:

from ratebeer import RateBeer

RateBeer().search("summit extra pale ale")

Methods

search -- A generic search. A dictionary with two keys: beers and breweries. Each of those contains a list of dictionaries.

>>> rb = RateBeer()
>>> rb.search("summit extra pale ale")
{'beers': [{'id': '7344',
   'name': u'Summit Extra Pale Ale',
   'num_ratings': u'681',
   'rating': u'72',
   'url': '/beer/summit-extra-pale-ale/7344/'}],
 'breweries': []}

beer -- Returns information about that beer. Now if we were using an API, you'd use an id of some variety. Unfortunately, scraping makes things a little more challenging, so as a UUID here, we're using the url of the beer.

>>> rb.beer("/beer/new-belgium-tour-de-fall/279122/")
{'abv': 6.0,
 'brewery': u'New Belgium Brewing Company',
 'brewery_url': '/brewers/new-belgium-brewing-company/77/',
 'calories': 180.0,
 'description': u'New Belgium\x92s love for beer, bikes and benefits is best described by being at Tour de Fat. Our love for Cascade and Amarillo hops is best tasted in our Tour de Fall Pale Ale. We\x92re cruising both across the country during our favorite time of year. Hop on and find Tour de Fall Pale Ale in fall 2014.',
 'ibu': 38.0,
 'name': u'New Belgium Tour de Fall',
 'num_ratings': 248.0,
 'overall_rating': 80,
 'seasonal': u'Autumn',
 'style': u'American Pale Ale',
 'style_rating': 78,
 'url': '/beer/new-belgium-tour-de-fall/279122/',
 'weighted_avg': 3.33}

brewery -- Returns information about the brewery. Takes a url, and can include a flag to disable returning the list of beers from that brewery.

>>> rb.brewery("/brewers/deschutes-brewery/233/")
{'city': u'Bend',
 'country': u'USA',
 'name': u'Deschutes Brewery',
 'postal_code': u'97702',
 'state': u'Oregon',
 'street': u'901 SW Simpson Ave',
 'type': u'Microbrewery',
 'beers': [{'id': '282308',
            'name': u'Deschutes (Dry-Hopped) Table Beer',
            'num_ratings': u'1',
            'rating': u'',
            'url': '/beer/deschutes-dry-hopped-table-beer/282308/'},
            ...
           {'id': '180887',
            'name': u'Deschutes Zymerge (Low Gluten Beer)',
            'num_ratings': u'2',
            'rating': u'',
            'url': '/beer/deschutes-zymerge-low-gluten-beer/180887/'}]}

>>> rb.brewery("/brewers/summit-brewing-company/1233/",include_beers=False)
{'city': u'St. Paul',
 'country': u'USA',
 'name': u'Summit Brewing Company',
 'postal_code': u'55102',
 'state': u'Minnesota',
 'street': u'910 Montreal Circle',
 'type': u'Microbrewery'}

reviews -- Returns a generator of dictionaries containing reviews. Requires a url, can also take review_order ("most recent", "top raters", "highest score"):

>>> reviews = rb.reviews("/beer/alchemist-heady-topper/32329/1/118/")
>>> reviews.next()
{'appearance': u'5/5',
 'aroma': u'8/10',
 'date': datetime.date(2015, 1, 25),
 'overall': u'19/20',
 'palate': u'5/5',
 'rating': 4.7,
 'taste': u'10/10',
 'text': u'...',
 'user_location': u'Greater London, ENGLAND',
 'user_name': u'jc1762'}

beer_style_list -- Returns a dictionary containing the beer style name and a link to that page.

>>> rb.beer_style_list()
{u'Abbey Dubbel': '/beerstyles/abbey-dubbel/71/',
 ...
 u'Zwickel/Keller/Landbier': '/beerstyles/zwickel-keller-landbier/74/'}

beer_style -- A list of dictionaries containing beers from the beer style page. Takes a url to a beer style and an optional sort_type: overall returns the highest-rated beers (default behavior) and trending returns, well, the trending beers.

>>> rb.beer_style("/beerstyles/abbey-dubbel/71/")
[{'name': u'St. Bernardus Prior 8',
  'rating': u'3.85',
  'url': '/beer/st-bernardus-prior-8/2531/'},
   ...
 {'name': u'Chama River Demolition Dubbel',
  'rating': u'3.46',
  'url': '/beer/chama-river-demolition-dubbel/33903/'}]

Tests

ratebeer uses the standard Python unit testing library.

Changes

Note that the nature of web scraping means this will be in perpetual beta.

###v1.4

reviews is now a generator.

###v1.3.5

Several improvements to results, particularly for edge cases and situations where search results are not in the expected order.

###v1.3.4

Metadata for beers returns floats when appropriate.

###v1.3.3

Captures more meta data.
Plays better with foreign beers.
Now if information is missing from a beer entry, its key is not added to the beer output.

###v1.3.2

Captures aliases for beer names.

###v1.3

Added beer_style_list and beer_style.

###v1.2

Everything conforms to PEP8 now. Thanks to the fine folks here.
Minor refactoring.

###v1.1

Added reviews.
Better exceptions (no more LookupError for 404s)

v1.0

Initial release.

License

Contributor: Andrew Lilja

Contributor: Steven A. Cholewiak

All code released under the Unlicense (a.k.a. Public Domain).

philadams-zz / ratebeer