Description

The program uses python and psycopg2 to make queries to an SQL database and outputs the results in a simple text file. The queries include joining multiple tables to get the desired information and is presented in an easy to read format for interested readers.

Requirements

• Python 3: Download the latest version of Python here
• PostgreSQL: Download from here
• psycopg2: Installation instructions
• if you're on windows, download git bash

How to run

• Download the news database
• cd into the project directory.
• unzip the news database in the directory.
• run the command psql -d news -f newsdata.sql. (Make sure to download all the required software for this to work)
• use the python or python3 command with the logsanalysis.py file from your command line. (i.e. python logsanalysis.py)
• The program will run for a while and will output the results into the output.txt file. (nothing will be output in the command line)

How it works

• The program first connects to the news database and creates a cursor.
• It then performs three queries, namely:
  1. Finding the three most popular articles.
  2. Listing the most popular authors by article page views.
  3. Finding the days where more than 1% of requests to the website led to errors.
• The query results are then saved into strings and appended into the output.txt file.