`praw` configuration or version issue

[kjschiroo]

There appears to be a compatibility issue with praw or an undocumented config file that needs to get setup. When executing this cell:

#adding a number to the end of the %run call with get the ith top post.
%run top_showerthoughts_submissions.py 2

print("Post contents: \n")
print(top_post)

It gives this error.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
KeyError                                  Traceback (most recent call last)
/opt/conda/lib/python3.6/configparser.py in items(self, section, raw, vars)
    842         try:
--> 843             d.update(self._sections[section])
    844         except KeyError:

KeyError: 'BayesianMethodsForHackers'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

NoSectionError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
/opt/notebooks/Chapter4_TheGreatestTheoremNeverTold/top_showerthoughts_submissions.py in <module>()
      7 
      8 
----> 9 reddit = praw.Reddit("BayesianMethodsForHackers")
     10 subreddit  = reddit.get_subreddit("showerthoughts")
     11 

/opt/conda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/praw/reddit.py in __init__(self, site_name, **config_settings)
    101         self._unique_counter = 0
    102         self.config = Config(site_name or os.getenv('praw_site') or 'DEFAULT',
--> 103                              **config_settings)
    104 
    105         required_message = ('Required configuration setting {!r} missing. \n'

/opt/conda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/praw/config.py in __init__(self, site_name, **settings)
     64 
     65         self._settings = settings
---> 66         self.custom = dict(Config.CONFIG.items(site_name), **settings)
     67 
     68         self.client_id = self.client_secret = self.oauth_url = None

/opt/conda/lib/python3.6/configparser.py in items(self, section, raw, vars)
    844         except KeyError:
    845             if section != self.default_section:
--> 846                 raise NoSectionError(section)
    847         # Update with the entry specific variables
    848         if vars:

NoSectionError: No section: 'BayesianMethodsForHackers'

Post contents: 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-7-be2145cbdc50> in <module>()
      3 
      4 print("Post contents: \n")
----> 5 print(top_post)

NameError: name 'top_post' is not defined

I'm running version praw==4.4.0

[jeff-hughes]

I had the same issue. It appears the praw API has changed significantly as of v4. I was able to get the code working by installing praw 3.6.1, but it would be good if the code could be updated to work on the more recent versions.

[angelaambroz]

Yep, same here. Looks like the new PRAW needs more authentication. Mine ran fine when I added this:

reddit = praw.Reddit(client_id=[my id],
                     client_secret=[my secret],
                     user_agent=[a random string explaining my 'app'],
                     username=[my reddit username],
                     password=[my reddit password)

In addition to more authentication being needed, the PRAW devs changed some of their method names and moved some stuff around (namely, you can access upvote_ratio in the submission object now):

for sub in top_submissions:
    try:
        ratio = sub.upvote_ratio
        ups = int(round((ratio*sub.score)/(2*ratio - 1)) if ratio != 0.5 else round(sub.score/2))
        upvotes.append(sub.ups)
        downvotes.append(ups - sub.score)
        contents.append(sub.title)
    except Exception as e:
        raise e

[gnperdue]

With PRAW 6 I had to make a couple of tweaks to get this to work. Thanks a lot to previous commenters for clues.

reddit = praw.Reddit(
    client_id=client_id,
    client_secret=client_secret,
    user_agent=user_agent,
    username=username,
    password=password,
)
subreddit = reddit.subreddit("showerthoughts")

# go by timespan - 'hour', 'day', 'week', 'month', 'year', 'all'
# might need to go longer than an hour to get entries...
top_submissions = subreddit.top('hour')

n_sub = int(sys.argv[1]) if len(sys.argv) > 1 else 1

i = 0
while i < n_sub:
    top_submission = next(top_submissions)
    i += 1

top_post = top_submission.title

upvotes = []
downvotes = []
contents = []

for sub in top_submissions:
    try:
        ratio = sub.upvote_ratio
        ups = int(round((ratio*sub.score)/(2*ratio - 1))
                  if ratio != 0.5 else round(sub.score/2))
        upvotes.append(ups)
        downvotes.append(ups - sub.score)
        contents.append(sub.title)
    except Exception as e:
        continue

[gnperdue]

I should have mentioned that the limit arg works in top(), e.g.

top_submissions = subreddit.top('hour', limit=5)
top_submissions = subreddit.top('all', limit=20)