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CP Vanity Lite

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4.99/5 (29 votes)
19 Nov 2010CPOL4 min read 141.9K   773   22   80
This is a lightweight version of Luc Pattyn's popular CP Vanity application

Image 1

Figure 1 : CP Vanity Lite - the main dialog

Image 2

Figure 2 : The exported CSV file in Excel

Introduction

This is a light version of Luc Pattyn's ever popular CP Vanity application. Luc tired of frequently having to modify the parsing code due to unavoidable site changes and has not updated his application since the last major site-update (a few weeks ago). That's what led me to write this app which is a miniature version of his application. Unlike CP Vanity, CP Vanity Lite does not really go into the details, instead it will only fetch the total reputation for members that are most likely to have high reputation scores. I use the same approach Luc took, namely to get the top members based on post-count and the top members based on article count, and then fetch the reputation score for each of those members. I fetch the top 125 in each category but because of certain members being in both groups, you'll find that the total number of members for whom rep scores are fetched is less than 250. In addition to the total score it also shows a daily score average that's calculated based on the total score and the number of days since a member signed up.

A word of warning: The application fetches and parses HTML from hardcoded URLs. If the URLs or the HTML content undergo changes, then the parsing code will break. Until a time in future when CP offers a web-service that will return this information, the premise on which this application has been written will be shaky. This is the same for similar applications written by myself and folks like Luc Pattyn.

Using CP Vanity Lite

There's not much to using the app, and all you do is run the application and wait for the UI to populate. The title bar will show fetching while the HTTP fetches are performed, and once all the data is available, it'll say completed. The UI is a simple ListView that's sortable on the Reputation Score column. Every time you click on the header, the sort is toggled between ascending and descending, which is quite handy if you get tired of seeing CG's name right there on top! The data is populated asynchronously via a worker thread, so the app will be responsive throughout the fetch-period. You can sort the data even before all the data has been fetched, but keep in mind that newly added rows will not be sorted although you can keep sorting as many times as you want to. Once all the data is fetched, the Export as CSV button is enabled, and you can save a CSV file that you can then open in an app like Excel to do all kinds of fancy data manipulations and charts. Take a look at Figure 2 and you'll see how far ahead of the competition CG is, he's got more than John and Pete combined! If you run the app periodically and save the CSV files, you set yourself up nicely for some date-based data parsing to determine changes in scores and how fast someone's catching up (if you are the statistically curious type).

The code

The html scraping is done in a single class called RepScoreScraper. The code will block, so it's up to calling code to use it from a worker thread or via some async/task pattern that won't block the main thread. The top potential scoring members ids are fetched by querying the Who's who pages for top message posters and for top article authors. The information is extracted using regular expressions. (I've wrapped the code blocks to prevent scrolling, the actual source code does not wrap this crazily)

C#
private Regex memberNumberRegex = new Regex("Member No. (\\d*)");
private Regex repScoreRegex = new Regex(
  "<span id=\"ctl00_.*?_TotalRep\" class=\"large-text\">([\\s\\S]*?)</span>");
private Regex displayNameRegex = new Regex(
  "<h2 id=\"ctl00_.*?_P_Name\">([\\s\\S]*?)</h2>");
private Regex memberSinceRegex = new Regex("Member since (.+)\n");

Note that I have snipped the URLs in the code snippet here to prevent horizontal scrolling.

C#
public void StartScraping()
{
    string[] ml_obs = new[] { "ArticleCount", "MessageCount" };
    HashSet<int> ids = new HashSet<int>();

    for (int j = 0; j < ml_obs.Length; j++)
    {
        for (int page = 1; page <= 5; page++)
        {
            string url = String.Format(
                "**SNIPPED**?ml_ob={0}&mgtid=-1&mgm=False&pgnum={1}", 
                ml_obs[j], page);
            string html = GetHttpPage(url, timeOut);

            var memberNumberMatches = memberNumberRegex.Matches(html);
            var repScoreMatches = repScoreRegex.Matches(html);
            var displayNameMatches = displayNameRegex.Matches(html);
            var memberSinceMatches = memberSinceRegex.Matches(html);

            if (memberNumberMatches.Count == repScoreMatches.Count 
              && memberNumberMatches.Count == displayNameMatches.Count 
              && memberNumberMatches.Count == memberSinceMatches.Count)
            {
                for (int i = 0; i < memberNumberMatches.Count; i++)
                {
                    int id = -1;
                    double score = -1.0;
                    double scorePerDay = 0.0;

                    DateTime memberSince = ParseDateTime(memberSinceMatches[i].Value);

                    if (memberNumberMatches[i].Groups.Count == 2 && 
                      Int32.TryParse(memberNumberMatches[i].Groups[1].Value, out id) &&
                      repScoreMatches[i].Groups.Count == 2 && 
                      Double.TryParse(repScoreMatches[i].Groups[1].Value, out score) &&
                      displayNameMatches[i].Groups.Count == 2)
                    {
                        if (!ids.Contains(id))
                        {
                            ids.Add(id);

                            if (memberSince != DateTime.MinValue)
                            {
                                scorePerDay = Math.Round(
                                  score / (DateTime.Now - memberSince).TotalDays, 2);                                
                            }

                            var handler = MemberInfoScraped;
                            if (handler != null)
                            {
                                handler(this, new RepScoreScraperEventArgs() 
                                { 
                                    Id = id, 
                                    DisplayName = StripOffHtml(
                                      displayNameMatches[i].Groups[1].Value.Trim()), 
                                    ReputationScore = (int)score,
                                    DailyAverage = scorePerDay
                                });
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    var finishedHandler = ScrapeFinished;
    if (finishedHandler != null)
    {
        finishedHandler(this, EventArgs.Empty);
    }
}

That's it. If you run into any problems, please use the forum below to report those and I'll do my best to fix them. Thank you.

Acknowledgements

  • RaviRanjankr - For beta testing the application and providing useful feedback that led me to improving and simplifying the fetch code.

History

  • November 17, 2010 : First published
  • November 19, 2010
    • Added rank and daily average columns.
    • You can now refresh the scores.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
United States United States
Nish Nishant is a technology enthusiast from Columbus, Ohio. He has over 20 years of software industry experience in various roles including Chief Technology Officer, Senior Solution Architect, Lead Software Architect, Principal Software Engineer, and Engineering/Architecture Team Leader. Nish is a 14-time recipient of the Microsoft Visual C++ MVP Award.

Nish authored C++/CLI in Action for Manning Publications in 2005, and co-authored Extending MFC Applications with the .NET Framework for Addison Wesley in 2003. In addition, he has over 140 published technology articles on CodeProject.com and another 250+ blog articles on his WordPress blog. Nish is experienced in technology leadership, solution architecture, software architecture, cloud development (AWS and Azure), REST services, software engineering best practices, CI/CD, mentoring, and directing all stages of software development.

Nish's Technology Blog : voidnish.wordpress.com

Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Amir Mohammad Nasrollahi13-Aug-13 9:34
professionalAmir Mohammad Nasrollahi13-Aug-13 9:34 
QuestionMy vote of 5 Pin
Mike Hankey17-Apr-12 3:05
mveMike Hankey17-Apr-12 3:05 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
ashishkumar00831-May-11 12:32
ashishkumar00831-May-11 12:32 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nish Nishant31-May-11 13:07
sitebuilderNish Nishant31-May-11 13:07 
GeneralFinally Pin
thatraja4-Apr-11 4:34
professionalthatraja4-Apr-11 4:34 
GeneralRe: Finally Pin
Nish Nishant4-Apr-11 4:39
sitebuilderNish Nishant4-Apr-11 4:39 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
prasad0217-Dec-10 1:10
prasad0217-Dec-10 1:10 
Wow Super 5/5
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Hiren solanki29-Nov-10 0:03
Hiren solanki29-Nov-10 0:03 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nish Nishant1-Dec-10 2:47
sitebuilderNish Nishant1-Dec-10 2:47 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Hiren solanki1-Dec-10 2:50
Hiren solanki1-Dec-10 2:50 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nish Nishant1-Dec-10 2:53
sitebuilderNish Nishant1-Dec-10 2:53 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Dalek Dave28-Nov-10 23:49
professionalDalek Dave28-Nov-10 23:49 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nish Nishant1-Dec-10 2:46
sitebuilderNish Nishant1-Dec-10 2:46 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Daniel Vaughan22-Nov-10 22:37
Daniel Vaughan22-Nov-10 22:37 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nish Nishant23-Nov-10 2:49
sitebuilderNish Nishant23-Nov-10 2:49 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
DaveAuld22-Nov-10 0:17
professionalDaveAuld22-Nov-10 0:17 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nish Nishant22-Nov-10 2:20
sitebuilderNish Nishant22-Nov-10 2:20 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Pete O'Hanlon21-Nov-10 9:22
subeditorPete O'Hanlon21-Nov-10 9:22 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nish Nishant21-Nov-10 11:52
sitebuilderNish Nishant21-Nov-10 11:52 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Abhinav S20-Nov-10 5:21
Abhinav S20-Nov-10 5:21 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nish Nishant20-Nov-10 5:38
sitebuilderNish Nishant20-Nov-10 5:38 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Abhinav S20-Nov-10 5:56
Abhinav S20-Nov-10 5:56 
GeneralWoohoo! Pin
Bassam Abdul-Baki19-Nov-10 15:48
professionalBassam Abdul-Baki19-Nov-10 15:48 
GeneralRe: Woohoo! Pin
Nish Nishant20-Nov-10 2:40
sitebuilderNish Nishant20-Nov-10 2:40 
GeneralRe: Woohoo! Pin
Bassam Abdul-Baki20-Nov-10 3:24
professionalBassam Abdul-Baki20-Nov-10 3:24 

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