Python Cheat Sheet: Image Processing, API Calls, Data Mining, and Automation Scripts

Image processing with Pillow

Install Pillow and use it to open an image, convert it to a NumPy array, modify pixel values, and save a new image.

pip install pillow

from PIL import Image

import numpy as np

a = np.array(Image.open('test.jpg'))

b = [255,255,255] - a

im = Image.fromarray(b.astype('uint8'))

im.save('new.jpg')

Download videos with youtube-dl

Install youtube-dl and download a video from YouTube.

pip install youtube-dl

pip install -U youtube-dl

youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"

Inspect request object attributes

Install pdir2 to list all attributes and methods of a requests object.

pip install pdir2

import pdir, requests

pdir.pdir(requests)

NetEase Cloud Music API

Install ncmbot, log in, and fetch a user's playlist.

pip install ncmbot

import ncmbot

bot = ncmbot.login(phone='xxx', password='yyy')

bot.user_play_list(uid='36554272')

Subtitle downloader

Install getsub to download video subtitles.

pip install getsub

Financial data with Tushare

Install tushare and retrieve daily market data for all stocks.

pip install tushare

import tushare as ts

ts.get_today_all()

Vulnerability lab with Docker

Install Docker, docker-compose, clone the vulhub repository, and start a vulnerable service.

curl -s https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python3

apt-get update && apt-get install -y docker.io

service docker start

pip install docker-compose

git clone https://github.com/phith0n/vulhub.git

cd vulhub && cd nginx_php5_mysql && docker-compose build && docker-compose up -d

Beijing bus real‑time API

Use the beijing_bus package to list lines, search a line, and get real‑time data.

pip install r

from beijing_bus import BeijingBus

lines = BeijingBus.get_all_lines()

line = lines[0]

print(line.id, line.name)

data = line.get_realtime_data(1)

Article extraction with Goose

Clone Goose, install requirements, and extract cleaned text from a URL.

git clone https://github.com/grangier/python-goose.git

cd python-goose && pip install -r requirements.txt

python setup.py install

from goose import Goose

g = Goose({'stopwords_class': StopWordsChinese})

article = g.extract(url='http://www.bbc.co.uk/...')

print(article.cleaned_text[:150])

Sentiment analysis

Use TextBlob for English and SnowNLP for Chinese sentiment.

pip install textblob

from textblob import TextBlob

blob = TextBlob("I am happy today. I feel sad today.")

print(blob.sentiment)

pip install snownlp

from snownlp import SnowNLP

s = SnowNLP('这个东西真心很赞')

print(s.sentiments)

Fake user‑agent generation

Install fake_useragent and retrieve random browser strings.

pip install fake-useragent

from fake_useragent import UserAgent

ua = UserAgent()

print(ua.ie)

HTTP request statistics

Install httpstat to visualize curl performance.

pip install httpstat

httpstat http://httpbin.org/get

Shell commands from Python

Install sh and run ifconfig.

pip install sh

from sh import ifconfig

print(ifconfig("eth0"))

Chinese text processing

Install snownlp and TextBlob for sentiment, word segmentation, and pinyin.

pip install snownlp

from snownlp import SnowNLP

s = SnowNLP('这个东西真心很赞')

print(s.words)

print(s.tags)

print(s.pinyin)

Password breach lookup

Install leakPasswd and check if a password appears in known breaches.

pip install leakPasswd

import leakPasswd

leakPasswd.findBreach('taobao')

Nginx log analysis

Install ngxtop to parse access logs and view summary statistics.

pip install ngxtop

ngxtop

Train ticket query

Install iquery and use the -dgktz option to query high‑speed train tickets.

pip install iquery

iquery -dgktz <from> <to> <date>