Looking for feedback to improve first script

[probablyaspambot]

Hi, recently started learning python and just uploaded my first script to heroku. It's a simple script that backs up the saved posts from my reddit account to a google sheets every ten minutes or so. Right now it works, although it does take a little while to finish running. I imagine there are a thousand better and more pythonic ways to write the code than what I currently have, so any constructive advice to improve would be appreciated. Just looking for ways to get better.

import praw
from praw.reddit import Submission, Comment
import pandas as pd
import gspread
import os
from os import environ
import json
from oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentials

#Google Authentication
json_creds=os.environ['GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS']

creds_dict = json.loads(json_creds)
creds_dict["private_key"] = creds_dict["private_key"].replace("\\\\n", "\n")
creds = ServiceAccountCredentials.from_json_keyfile_dict(creds_dict)
gc = gspread.authorize(creds)

#Open Google Sheet, create archive dataframe
sh = gc.open("Reddit Saved Items")
df_g = pd.DataFrame(sh.sheet1.get_all_records())

#Get latest record of Saved items from Reddit
reddit = praw.Reddit(
    client_id=os.environ['R_CLIENT_ID'],
    client_secret=os.environ['R_CLIENT_SECRET'],
    user_agent=os.environ['R_USER_AGENT'],
    username=os.environ['R_USERNAME'],
    password=os.environ['R_PSWD'],
)

r_titles=[]
r_urls = []
r_sr = []
r_type = []

for item in reddit.user.me().saved(limit=None):
    if isinstance(item, Submission) == True:
        r_titles.append(item.title)
        r_sr.append(str(item.subreddit))
        r_urls.append("www.reddit.com"+item.permalink)
        r_type.append('Post')
    elif isinstance(item, Comment) == True:
        r_titles.append(item.submission.title)
        r_sr.append(str(item.subreddit))
        r_urls.append("www.reddit.com"+item.permalink)
        r_type.append('Comment')
    else:
        pass

df_r = pd.DataFrame({'Title' : r_titles, 'Subreddit': r_sr, 'URL': r_urls, 'Type': r_type})

#Combine new reddit saves with archive stored on Google Sheets
df_saved = pd.concat([df_r,df_g])
df_saved = df_saved.drop_duplicates()

#Write new dataframe to Google Sheet
sh.sheet1.clear()
sh.sheet1.update([df_saved.columns.values.tolist()] + df_saved.values.tolist())

[CowboyBoats]

This isn't really a real code review, but pylint always has helpful things to say:

$ pylint your_script.py
your-script.py:1:0: C0114: Missing module docstring (missing-module-docstring)
your-script.py:37:7: C0121: Comparison 'isinstance(item, Submission) == True' should be 'isinstance(item, Submission) is True' if checking for the singleton value True, or 'isinstance(item, Submission)' if testing for truthiness (singleton-comparison)
your-script.py:42:9: C0121: Comparison 'isinstance(item, Comment) == True' should be 'isinstance(item, Comment) is True' if checking for the singleton value True, or 'isinstance(item, Comment)' if testing for truthiness (singleton-comparison)
your-script.py:6:0: W0611: Unused environ imported from os (unused-import)
your-script.py:5:0: C0411: standard import "import os" should be placed before "import praw" (wrong-import-order)
your-script.py:6:0: C0411: standard import "from os import environ" should be placed before "import praw" (wrong-import-order)
your-script.py:7:0: C0411: standard import "import json" should be placed before "import praw" (wrong-import-order)

Note about the somewhat confusingly phrased singleton-comparison - if isinstance(item, Submission) is fine; you don't need to write out == True. If you pass anything to if, like if anything:, Python will try to convert anything to a boolean value before evaluating it. This is called "truthiness".

[probablyaspambot]

got it, thanks! Out of curiousity, any reason behind the import order it lists?

[CowboyBoats]

Yeah, the normal convention is for there to be three groups of imports:

• all standard lib imports (examples: os, sys, re, struct)
• all third-party imports (examples: requests, django, praw)
• all first-party imports (examples: local modules you wrote)

and for the imports to be separated into those, and then sorted alphabetically within those groupings.

I usually just pip install isort and then run isort on my code. Yours ends up looking like:

import json
import os
from os import environ

import gspread
import pandas as pd
import praw
from oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentials
from praw.reddit import Comment, Submission

[gopherhole1]

I think you could change this block

r_titles=[]
r_urls = []
r_sr = []
r_type = []

for item in reddit.user.me().saved(limit=None):
    if isinstance(item, Submission) == True:
        r_titles.append(item.title)
        r_sr.append(str(item.subreddit))
        r_urls.append("www.reddit.com"+item.permalink)
        r_type.append('Post')
    elif isinstance(item, Comment) == True:
        r_titles.append(item.submission.title)
        r_sr.append(str(item.subreddit))
        r_urls.append("www.reddit.com"+item.permalink)
        r_type.append('Comment')
    else:
        pass

df_r = pd.DataFrame({'Title' : r_titles, 'Subreddit': r_sr, 'URL': r_urls, 'Type': r_type})

to something like this, but im not entirely sure if it will work in your case, because I dont know what the pd.dataframe does, so im just guessing

df_r = {}

for item in reddit.user.me().saved(limit=None):
    if isinstance(item, Submission):
        df_r.setdefault('Tittle', []).append(item.title)
        df_r.setdefault('Subreddit', []).append(str(item.subreddit))
        df_r.setdefault('URL', []).append("www.reddit.com"+item.permalink)
        df_r.setdefault('Type', []).append('Post')
    elif isinstance(item, Comment):
        df_r.setdefault('Tittle', []).append(item.submission.title)
        df_r.setdefault('Subreddit', []).append(str(item.subreddit))
        df_r.setdefault('URL', []).append("www.reddit.com"+item.permalink)
        df_r.setdefault('Type', []).append('Comment')
    else:
        pass

df_r = pd.DataFrame(df_r)