DEV Community: Martin Breuss

How to publish a post pulled in via RSS feed

Martin Breuss — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 14:25:12 +0000

I like what dev.to is doing and want to move my content over here. This post on Publishing RSS feed to dev.to helped me get going. However, after the posts were imported and showed up, I couldn't at first find out how to actually publish them:

Clicking on the article just gives you a chance to edit it, but there is no button to Publish as when you create a new post on dev.to.

The solution is easy once you know it :)

Click on Draft to enter the edit screen. It will show you something like this at the top of your text:

---
title: "All you need for working with Python 3 on a Mac"
published: false
date: 2018-09-08 18:50:16 UTC
tags: beginnercoding,setup,beginnersguide,python
canonical_url: https://medium.com/@martin.breuss/all-you-need-for-working-with-python-3-on-a-mac-c811ac094869
---

To publish, all you need to do is change:
published: false to published: true

Save, and your syndicated post is live on dev.to :)

Finding A Useful Dictionary API

Martin Breuss — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 11:22:19 +0000

I thought that would be easy, but they are difficult to spot

I have searched extensively for Dictionary APIs that can provide definitions for a few different natural languages. With this text, I hope to make the task easier for others out there in the wild.

Part 1: Looking For Google's Dictionary API

Google Dictionary API might be one of the first thoughts you come up with (right after "[just] google 'dictionary API'!" 😜 ).

I also thought of looking for the Google Dictionary API, and obviously did my fair share of googling.

The first one yields no useful results. At least nothing much since 2011. Google's great word info which their search returns when you look up a single term - or use the more explicit "define: your_word_here" - is not accessible other than through the search bar's results. I asked, and looked. I was:

In case someone knows how to get Google Dictionary information programmatically, please do leave a comment!

Part 2: Finding A List Of Dictionary APIs

Googling for Dictionary APIs is more useful. Soon I found myself skimming through 51 Dictionary APIs. 51 sounds good. There should be something useful among those.

But when digging deeper into this list, the language-related API ecosystem seems to be a bit of a mess:

Deprecated: Quite a few of the APIs are deprecated or not available
Duplicated: Some are listed twice or even thrice
Different: Other APIs are interesting oddities, e.g.:
- owlbot by Payam Nj, also on GitHub (and - the secret has been lifted - it's not the same person as this owlbot... 🦉😜)
- the Acronym API
- the No-Swearing API
- or weblaws, which is a cool idea, but not a dictionary (+ where's the API?)
Dollars $$$: Yet others are proprietary or too costly for me to consider

Oxford Dictionaries, number 1 on programmableweb's list, is actually quite a neat choice. They allow 3000 requests per month for free, and you're even allowed to use the API for commercial purposes. In case you're into that. However: it doesn't currently support client-side requests.

In general, there are two limitations that dictionary-API-land seems to have:

English-Centric: Many of the listed dictionaries are all about English. These can be quite useful, including definitions, part of speech, synonyms, thesaurus, etc.
Translations: Most other APIs are about translations

And yep, I've looked through all of them...

For those who counted - it's only 47, not the claimed 51. Finding definitions in common languages other than English, that are API-accessible, seems to be difficult. So regarding how to best find those I can only stockphoto-wisdom you:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Part 3: Making A New List Of Dictionary APIs

As a result of my research, here are some potentially useful APIs, filtered down to half the size of the original list, and rudimentarily annotated. I hope this might help other searchers of the trade:

Great Stuff (IMO)

Datamuse: you can do "sounds like" and "means like" queries. Very neat!
Oxford: 3000 queries/month, solid source. ATTENTION: doesn't currently support client-side requests (thanks for noting Steven Anderson!)
(unofficial) Google Dictionary API: A JS wrapper for the Oxford Dictionary API by Suraj Jain - this one is open source so everyone can contribute to making it even better!
Merriam-Webster: 1000/day with an API key (needs to be requested). According to Jesse DeWitt it has a couple of actively maintained APIs - mostly in English, but there's also a Spanish-English dictionary API available.

Maybe Useful

Hablaa: a crowdsourced thing made in Switzerland
Aspect: real-life video pronunciations (sounds interesting, but I don't know where the API is. I wrote to them, let's see what they'll respond)
OneLook: an aggregator of other dictionary providers, returns links

Useful For English

W{}rds
Wordnik
definitions.net: relatively small quota (has English definitions)

Other (More Common) Languages

OpenThesaurus: for German (includes word data downloads)

Proprietary (and most of them expensive)

Yandex (lots of translation from and into Russian)
MacMillan (English)
Cambridge: makes you fill an endless form (API only for English)
Collins: 5000 requests/month free (but you need to apply first; English monolingual)

Some Less Commonly Computer-Processed Languages

Tamil Dictionary: Tamil
Tvärslå: Nordic languages
Longdo: Thai
EAST: Japanese
IsZulu: Zulu(-eng) you can request an API key per email :)
Kateglo: from Indonesia (didn't check which specific languages)
Cevir: Turkish
Kasahorow: not really an API, but features some African languages

Sadly Discontinued

wordreference (however, do check out their great site)
dictionary.com (same, worth a hop)
Pearson: Used to be useful, but now deprecated (thanks for noting Mithun Madhav)

Not-Very-Dictionary-Related NLP APIs

Twinword: synonyms, semantic relations
Rhymebrain: get rhymes (sweet page)
Acromine (abbreviations), and also other NLP tools, e.g. for bio STEM
Glosbe: the only implementation of Translation Memory I found
Systrans: a company offering a variety of NLP related APIs

Another option might be the Wikimedia API.
I spent a few hours on that task, but since I was personally looking for a unified way to get definitions, the makeshift architecture of the different wiktionary entries seemed too much of a post-processing effort.

Hope this list can help someone along their way, and I appreciate your comments and updates if you find something useful!

All you need for working with Python 3 on a Mac

Martin Breuss — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 18:50:16 +0000

To clear up any confusion about a functioning setup to start working with Python 3 on a fresh Mac — here’s a quick (minimal) guide.

DO #1: download and install Python 3.x.x

Go to the official website and download Python from there. Yes — since you’re asking — do get the latest version (the one with the shiny yellow button):

Execute the installer and step through the required steps…

(it’s easier than that)

And if you’re on Mavericks (10.9) or above, you’re (nearly) done.

>> Really? Proof it!

Open your Terminal and verify by typing:

python3 --version

which should respond to you with something similar to: Python 3.7.0

Then type:

git --version

which should either:

prompt you to install the command-line tools. If so, allow that install (it’ll bring version control to your life!). This is, btw, the step that completes the “(nearly)” from above.
or, if it’s already there, it will say something like: git version 2.15.2 (Apple Git-101.1)

Finally, you can also ask your patient terminal the following:

pip3 --version

and it will dutifully respond with a lengthy: pip 18.0 from /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)

And with that you are all set up and ready to dive into writing code with Python 3 , and installing whatever package you may fancy from Python’s rich ecosystem on pypi.org using pip3 (create a virtual environment first!), and indulge in the reassuring beauty of version control with git.

>>> What if your OS is older than 10.9?

Update it. It’s free and makes your computer better.

If for any reason you can’t update your OS but still want to proceed working with Python 3 and git, then get Git from here:

A macOS Git installer is maintained and available for download at the Git website, at http://git-scm.com/download/mac.

You made it! Good job! Now, for your enjoyment, here’s a list of steps that are often mentioned in tutorials on how to get started, but IMO they only complicate the basic setup.

DON’T #1: install Anaconda

Anaconda is a great tool for data analysis , however, it comes with a lot of stuff. Anaconda is a full-blown Python distribution (= it’s its own version of Python!), that comes with its own package manager, tons of data science packages pre-installed, and oh — did I mention it also includes R?!

DON’T #2: install homebrew

Every second tutorial tells you to install homebrew first, and then use it to get python on your mac. Don’t do it. There’s no need.

I personally don’t like cellars very much, and even though I tried to homebrew a couple of years ago (I only drank it for the experience, not the taste ;) that alone can’t win me over for the easily forgettable and potentially already long-forgotten leftovers that homebrew’s Cellar structure induces on my machine.

DON’T #3: install pip

You don’t have to force-install pip if you download Python 3 from the official download page. It comes along voluntarily.

the official pip site speaks:

pip is already installed if you are using Python 2 >=2.7.9 or Python 3 >=3.4 downloaded from python.org

+/- useful tutorials

Other Resources

https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/installing/