Question

This link lets me get a random item from database. However, I would like to automatically retrieve items using Python. Here’s my code:

import sys
from urllib.parse import urlencode
from urllib.request import urlopen

# parameters
data = {}
data["query"] = "reviewd:yes+AND+organism:9606"
data["random"] = "yes"

url_values = urlencode(data)
url = "http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/"
full_url = url + '?' + url_values
data = urlopen(full_url)
out = open("1.html", 'w')
out.write(str(data.read()))

However, I cannot get the desired page. Anyone knows what’s wrong with my code? I’m using Python 3.x.

Answer 1

You have several issues:

1. reviewd is misspelled, it should be reviewed
2. The base url needs to have /uniprot/ at the end
3. You need to use space instead of + in your query string

Here is what that would look like:

import sys
from urllib.parse import urlencode
from urllib.request import urlopen

# parameters
data = {}
data["query"] = "reviewed:yes AND organism:9606"
data["random"] = "yes"

url_values = urlencode(data)
url = "http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/"
full_url = url + '?' + url_values
data = urlopen(full_url)
out = open("1.html", 'w')
out.write(str(data.read()))

This produces the following URL:

http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/?query=reviewed%3Ayes+AND+organism%3A9606&random=yes