Thread Stack Exchange

curl 'https://api.crawlbase.com/?token=YOUR_TOKEN' \
  --data-urlencode 'url=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2861071/how-to-modify-a-text-file' \
  --data-urlencode 'scraper=stackexchange-thread' -G

from crawlbase import CrawlingAPI

api = CrawlingAPI({'token': 'YOUR_TOKEN'})
res = api.get(
    'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2861071/how-to-modify-a-text-file',
    {'scraper': 'stackexchange-thread'}
)

import json
data = json.loads(res['body'])

const { CrawlingAPI } = require('crawlbase');
const api = new CrawlingAPI({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });

const res = await api.get(
  'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2861071/how-to-modify-a-text-file',
  { scraper: 'stackexchange-thread' }
);
const data = JSON.parse(res.body);

require 'crawlbase'
api = Crawlbase::API.new(token: 'YOUR_TOKEN')

res = api.get('https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2861071/how-to-modify-a-text-file', scraper: 'stackexchange-thread')
data = JSON.parse(res.body)

{
  "question": {
    "id": "2861071",
    "title": "How to modify a text file?",
    "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2861071/how-to-modify-a-text-file",
    "body": "I'm using Python and I need to insert a line at the start of a text file without loading the whole file into memory. Is there a way to do this in place, or do I have to rewrite the file?",
    "score": 312,
    "viewCount": 486201,
    "tags": ["python", "file", "text-files"],
    "askedAt": "2010-05-18T20:11:33Z",
    "author": {
      "name": "Nathan Fellman",
      "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/8460/nathan-fellman",
      "reputation": 127843
    },
    "comments": [
      {
        "id": "2954120",
        "score": 3,
        "body": "Do you need to preserve the original file, or is rewriting acceptable?",
        "author": "Greg Hewgill",
        "authorUrl": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/893/greg-hewgill",
        "createdAt": "2010-05-18T20:19:04Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "answerCount": 2,
  "answers": [
    {
      "id": "2861108",
      "score": 401,
      "isAccepted": true,
      "body": "You cannot insert into the middle of a file without rewriting it. Read the file into a list of lines, insert your new line, then write it all back:\n\n    with open('file.txt') as f:\n        lines = f.readlines()\n    lines.insert(0, 'new first line\\n')\n    with open('file.txt', 'w') as f:\n        f.writelines(lines)\n",
      "author": {
        "name": "Roberto Bonvallet",
        "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/193568/roberto-bonvallet",
        "reputation": 30215
      },
      "createdAt": "2010-05-18T20:15:52Z",
      "comments": [
        {
          "id": "2954260",
          "score": 12,
          "body": "For very large files, stream through a temporary file instead of holding everything in memory.",
          "author": "John Machin",
          "authorUrl": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/253537/john-machin",
          "createdAt": "2010-05-18T21:02:11Z"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "2861180",
      "score": 47,
      "isAccepted": false,
      "body": "If the file is large, use fileinput with inplace=True to edit it line by line without loading it all at once.",
      "author": {
        "name": "codeape",
        "url": "https://stackoverflow.com/users/18770/codeape",
        "reputation": 98412
      },
      "createdAt": "2010-05-18T20:24:39Z",
      "comments": []
    }
  ]
}