I have a 3 level json file. I am fetching the values of some of the attributes from each of the 3 levels of json. At the moment, the execution time of my code is pathetic as it is taking about 2-3 minutes to get the results on my web page. I will be having a much larger json file to deal with in production.
I am new to python and flask and haven't done much of web programming. Please suggest me ways I could optimise my below code! Thanks for help, much appreciated.
import json
import urllib2
import flask
from flask import request
def Backend():
url = 'http://localhost:8080/surveillance/api/v1/cameras/'
response = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()
response = json.loads(response)
components = list(response['children'])
urlComponentChild = []
for component in components:
urlComponent = str(url + component + '/')
responseChild = urllib2.urlopen(urlComponent).read()
responseChild = json.loads(responseChild)
camID = str(responseChild['id'])
camName = str(responseChild['name'])
compChildren = responseChild['children']
compChildrenName = list(compChildren)
for compChild in compChildrenName:
href = str(compChildren[compChild]['href'])
ID = str(compChildren[compChild]['id'])
urlComponentChild.append([href,ID])
myList = []
for each in urlComponentChild:
response = urllib2.urlopen(each[0]).read()
response = json.loads(response)
url = each[0] + '/recorder'
responseRecorder = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()
responseRecorder = json.loads(responseRecorder)
username = str(response['subItems']['surveillance:config']['properties']['username'])
password = str(response['subItems']['surveillance:config']['properties']['password'])
manufacturer = str(response['properties']['Manufacturer'])
model = str(response['properties']['Model'])
status = responseRecorder['recording']
myList.append([each[1],username,password,manufacturer,model,status])
return myList
APP = flask.Flask(__name__)
@APP.route('/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def index():
""" Displays the index page accessible at '/'
"""
if request.method == 'GET':
return flask.render_template('index.html', response = Backend())
if __name__ == '__main__':
APP.debug=True
APP.run(port=62000)
Ok, caching. So what we're going to do is start returning values to the user instantly based on data we already have, rather than generating new data every time. This means that the user might get slightly less up to date data than is theoretically possible to get, but it means that the data they do receive they receive as quickly as is possible given the system you're using.
So we'll keep your backend function as it is. Like I said, you could certainly speed it up with multithreading (If you're still interested in that, the 10 second version is that I would use grequests to asynchronously get data from a list of urls).
But, rather than call it in response to the user every time a user requests data, we'll just call it routinely every once in a while. This is almost certainly something you'd want to do eventually anyway, because it means you don't have to generate brand new data for each user, which is extremely wasteful. We'll just keep some data on hand in a variable, update that variable as often as we can, and return whatever's in that variable every time we get a new request.
from threading import Thread
from time import sleep
data = None
def Backend():
.....
def main_loop():
while True:
sleep(LOOP_DELAY_TIME_SECONDS)
global data
data = Backend()
APP = flask.Flask(__name__)
@APP.route('/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def index():
""" Displays the index page accessible at '/'
"""
if request.method == 'GET':
# Return whatever data we currently have cached
return flask.render_template('index.html', response = data)
if __name__ == '__main__':
data = Backend() # Need to make sure we grab data before we start the server so we never return None to the user
Thread(target=main_loop).start() #Loop and grab new data at every loop
APP.debug=True
APP.run(port=62000)
DISCLAIMER: I've used Flask and threading before for a few projects, but I am by no means an expert on it or web development, at all. Test this code before using it for anything important (or better yet, find someone who knows that they're doing before using it for anything important)
Edit: data will have to be a global, sorry about that - hence the disclaimer