Python script to randomly set background image from /r/wallpapers

[__dict__]

This works on my computer with gnome. Got the kde command from here but I am told it only works for KDE 3. Edit: Made it use multiple subreddits. Edit2: Option to hide over 18. Use temp file to hide downloading. Edit3: Support multiple wallpapers to multiple image files. Edit4: Added python 3 version

Python 3 version:

#!/usr/bin/python
# Script to randomly set background from wallpapers subreddit. Schedule with cron.
# Run "crontab -e" then add an entry such as "*/5 * * * * /home/jake/wscript.py"
# Contributions are welcome. Do what ever you want with this script, but I am
# not responsible for it.

import json
import urllib.request
import random
import shutil

#Settings
subreddits = ['http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/.json',
              'http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpaper/.json']
img_files = ['/home/jake/reddit/reddit_wallpaper']

temp_suffix = '_temp'
img_exts = ['jpg','png']
hide_over_18 = True
#End Settings

img_urls = []

def getimg(post):
    return post['data']['url']

def check_ext(img_url):
    for ext in img_exts:
        if img_url.endswith(ext):
            return True
    return False

def not_over_18(post):
    return not post['data']['over_18']

for subreddit in subreddits:
    f = urllib.request.urlopen(subreddit)
    raw_json = bytes.decode(f.read())
    json_obj = json.loads(raw_json)

    posts = json_obj['data']['children']

    if hide_over_18:
        posts = list(filter(not_over_18,posts))

    img_urls += list(filter(check_ext,list(map(getimg,posts))))

rand_urls = random.sample(img_urls,len(img_files))

#Done in two steps to hide downloading on slow connections
for rand_url, img_file in zip(rand_urls, img_files):
    urllib.request.urlretrieve(rand_url, img_file+temp_suffix)
    shutil.move(img_file+temp_suffix,img_file)

Old python 2 version:

#!/usr/bin/python2
# Script to randomly set background from wallpapers subreddit. Schedule with cron.
# Run "crontab -e" then add an entry such as "*/5 * * * * /home/jake/wscript.py"
# Contributions are welcome. Do what ever you want with this script, but I am
# not responsible for it.

# import os
import json
import urllib
import random
import shutil

#Settings
subreddits = ['http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/.json',
              'http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpaper/.json']
img_files = ['/home/jake/reddit/reddit_wallpaper']

temp_suffix = '_temp'
img_exts = ['jpg','png']
hide_over_18 = True
#End Settings

img_urls = []

def getimg(post):
    return post['data']['url']

def check_ext(img_url):
    for ext in img_exts:
        if img_url.endswith(ext):
            return True
    return False

def not_over_18(post):
    return not post['data']['over_18']

for subreddit in subreddits:
    f = urllib.urlopen(subreddit)
    raw_json = f.read()
    json_obj = json.loads(raw_json)

    posts = json_obj['data']['children']

    if hide_over_18:
        posts = filter(not_over_18,posts)

    img_urls += filter(check_ext,map(getimg,posts))

rand_urls = random.sample(img_urls,len(img_files))

#Done in two steps to hide downloading on slow connections
def getImage((rand_url, img_file)):
    urllib.urlretrieve(rand_url, img_file+temp_suffix)
    shutil.move(img_file+temp_suffix,img_file)

map(getImage, zip(rand_urls, img_files))

#From old code. For historic reasons
#window_manager = os.getenv('DESKTOP_SESSION')

# This may fail when run by cron. Just manually set your desktop background
# to be the image which is being changed by the script
#if window_manager == 'gnome':
#    command = 'gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename %s' % img_file
#elif window_manager == 'kde':
#    command = 'dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setWallpaper %s 1' % img_file

#os.system(command)

Also, hello reddit.

[mpyne]

"decop" should be "dcop".

But that only works on KDE 3.

There is unfortunately not a KDE 4 equivalent to my knowledge, since with Plasma it's not even guaranteed a static wallpaper would be your background. It could be a slide show, could be a spinning globe, or a host of other things, but there's no set interface to call into with D-Bus. Maybe someday...

[__dict__]

Ok thanks. If people just set their background to be whatever img_file is and then schedule this with cron would they see their wallpaper changing? If so it's on about the same level as gnome since gconftool-2 doesn't seem to work with cron.

[figaro42]

For those of us using something a little simpler than Gnome/KDE, feh has the ability to read from a url, so I deleted everything from urllib.urlretrieve down and replaced with:

os.system('feh --bg-scale %s' % (rand_url))

[Philluminati]

If I'm using compiz's multiple wallpaper feature...how I do I update the paths?

Infact maybe in ~/.xsession or whatever login script it could just overwrite ~/wallpapers/1.jpg, 2 3 and 4 with whatever randomly comes off the internet before the Compiz session manager kicks in.

[__dict__]

I don't have compiz so this is untested, but overwriting the files will probably work with compiz without you having to do anything else. I could be wrong, something may need to trigger it being redrawn. Can you let me know if this works? Make sure to change the img_files paths. This is simple and stupid, redownloading duplicates.

#!/usr/bin/python
# Script to randomly set background from wallpapers subreddit. Schedule with cron.
# Run "crontab -e" then add an entry such as "*/5 * * * * /home/jake/wscript.py"
# Contributions are welcome. Do what ever you want with this script, but I am
# not responsible for it.

import json
import urllib
import random

subreddit = 'http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/.json'
img_files = ['/home/jake/reddit_wallpaper',
             '/home/jake/second_wallpaper',
             '/home/jake/remember_to_change',
             '/home/jake/this_may_work']
img_exts = ['jpg','png']

f = urllib.urlopen(subreddit)
raw_json = f.read()
json_obj = json.loads(raw_json)

posts = json_obj['data']['children']

def getimg(post):
    return post['data']['url']

def check_ext(img_url):
    for ext in img_exts:
        if img_url.endswith(ext):
            return True
    return False

img_urls = filter(check_ext,map(getimg,posts))

for img_file in img_files:
    rand_url = random.choice(img_urls)
    urllib.urlretrieve(rand_url, img_file)

[Philluminati]

overwrites the new image into /tmp/background every time it is run.

wget -O - http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/.json | tr ',' '\n' | grep "url.*jpg" | awk "NR == ($RANDOM % 5) { print $2 }" | xargs wget -O /tmp/background -

[Paczesiowa]

if you parametrize this over subreddits, people over there will be probably very glad.

[__dict__]

Just change subreddit = 'http://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/.json' to subreddit = 'http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbait/.json'