Using ElasticSearch on PythonAnywhere

You use PythonAnywhere to do the exercises for this course. Follow their instructions to create a free/beginner account. You should not need anything beyond the free account for this account.

Installing the Python Elastic Search Library

Since PythonAnywhere is a shared environment, using pip the normal way will not work unless you have created a virtual environment.

pip install 'elasticsearch<7.14.0'

You can set up a virtual environment and then use pip or just add the --user parameter to pip. Also make sure you are doing it for Python 3.

pip3 install --user 'elasticsearch<7.14.0'

Downloading Files using Linux Command Line

Some of the assignments ask you to download a file with code or data to do an assignment. You can do this by saving the file in your browser to your local computer and then uploading the file to PythonAnywhere. But there is a much quicker way to do it using the command line and the wget command.

The wget command (you can also use curl -O) retrieves a file from the web and stores it locally. For example in the Linux Shell you can type:

wget https://www.pg4e.com/code/elasticbook.py
wget https://www.pg4e.com/code/hidden-dist.py
wget https://www.pg4e.com/gutenberg/cache/epub/18866/pg18866.txt

And these files will be downloaded.

The beginner accounts on PythonAnywhere are behind a firewall so you can only access pre-approved web sites - so don't be surprised if you get an error like:

$ wget http://www.amazon.com/                                                           
--2020-10-28 12:30:25--  http://www.amazon.com/                                                 
Resolving proxy.server (proxy.server)... 10.0.0.98                                              
Connecting to proxy.server (proxy.server)|10.0.0.98|:3128... connected.
Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
2020-10-28 12:30:25 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

The wget and curl commands are powerful command line tools that are very helpful when logged into a Linux system in the cloud.