General programming question. When to use OOP?

Question

My program needs to do 2 things.

1. Extract stuff from a webpage.

2. Do stuff with a webpage.

However, there are many webpages, su

Answer 1

It's up to you. I personally try to stay away from Java-style classes when programming in python. Instead, I use dicts and/or simple objects.

For instance, after defining these functions (the ones you defined in the question), I'd create a simple dict, maybe like this:

{ 'facebook' : { 'process' : facebookProcess, 'extract': facebookExtract }, 
 ..... 
}

or, better yet, use introspection to get the process/extract function automatically:

def processor(sitename):
    return getattr(module, sitename + 'Process')

def extractor(sitename):
    return getattr(module, sitename + 'Extractor')

Where module is the current module (or the module that has these functions).

To get this module as an object:

import sys
module = sys.modules[__name__]

Assuming of course, that the generic main function does something like this:

    figure out sitename based on input.
    get the extractor function for the site
    get processor function for the site
    call the extractor then the processor