Automate Daily Joke SMS with Python: From API to Cron Job

The article explains how to keep a girlfriend happy by automatically sending her a daily joke via SMS, using a Python script that fetches jokes from a free API, sends them through email, and schedules the task with cron.

Fetching jokes via API

It uses the 易源笑话大全 API with urllib2 to retrieve jokes in JSON format.

<code>appkey = "your_appkey"
url = 'http://apis.baidu.com/showapi_open_bus/showapi_joke/joke_text?page=1' # API address
req = urllib2.Request(url) # initialize request
req.add_header("apikey", appkey) # add header
resp = urllib2.urlopen(req) # send request
content = resp.read() # JSON string
if content:
    json_result = json.loads(content)
    content_list = json_result['showapi_res_body']['contentlist']
    first_title = content_list[0]['title'].encode('utf8')
    first_text = content_list[0]['text'].encode('utf8')
    print '标题：' + first_title
    print '内容：' + first_text
else:
    print "error"
</code>

Briefly describes urllib2 capabilities such as fetching web pages, validating HTTP servers, handling GET/POST data, exception handling, and non‑HTTP protocols like FTP.

Fetch web pages

Validate remote HTTP servers

Data requests (GET/POST)

Exception handling

Non‑HTTP protocols (FTP)

Sending the joke via email

Because the 139 mailbox forwards received emails to SMS for free, the script sends the joke via QQ's SMTP server.

<code>import smtplib, sys
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

mail_host = "smtp.qq.com"    # SMTP server
mail_user = "your_qq_email"
mail_pass = "your_qq_password"

def send_mail(to_list, sub, content):
    me = "Joke<" + mail_user + ">"
    msg = MIMEText(content, _subtype='html', _charset='utf-8')
    msg['Subject'] = sub
    msg['From'] = me
    msg['To'] = ";".join(to_list)
    try:
        s = smtplib.SMTP()
        s.connect(mail_host)
        s.login(mail_user, mail_pass)
        s.sendmail(me, to_list, msg.as_string())
        s.close()
        return True
    except Exception as e:
        print str(e)
        return False
</code>

The 139 mailbox limits messages to 140 characters, so the joke is split into three parts (sender name, subject, body) to stay within the limit.

Selecting the shortest joke

<code>json_result = json.loads(content)
content_list = json_result['showapi_res_body']['contentlist']
minlen = 10000
for item in content_list:
    if len(item['text']) < minlen:
        title = item['title']
        text = item['text']
        minlen = len(item['text'])
</code>

Full script (joke.py)

<code># -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
'''
Created on 2019-10-18
@author: Kang
'''
import urllib2, json, sys, smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

reload(sys)
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')

mail_host = "smtp.qq.com"
mail_user = "************"
mail_pass = "*********"
mailto_list = ['*******']

def send_mail(to_list, part1, sub, content):
    me = part1 + "<" + mail_user + ">"
    msg = MIMEText(content, _subtype='plain', _charset='utf-8')
    msg['Subject'] = sub
    msg['From'] = me
    msg['To'] = ";".join(to_list)
    try:
        s = smtplib.SMTP()
        s.connect(mail_host)
        s.login(mail_user, mail_pass)
        s.sendmail(me, to_list, msg.as_string())
        s.close()
        return True
    except Exception as e:
        print str(e)
        return False

if __name__ == '__main__':
    appkey = "e2376cfbe3b27dff923ed61698839a67"
    url = 'http://apis.baidu.com/showapi_open_bus/showapi_joke/joke_text?page=1'
    req = urllib2.Request(url)
    req.add_header("apikey", appkey)
    resp = urllib2.urlopen(req)
    content = resp.read()
    if content:
        json_result = json.loads(content)
        content_list = json_result['showapi_res_body']['contentlist']
        minlen = 10000
        for item in content_list:
            if len(item['text']) < minlen:
                first_title = item['title']
                first_text = item['text']
                minlen = len(item['text'])
        print 'title：' + first_title
        print 'content：' + first_text
        length = len(first_text)
        part1 = first_text[0:10]
        part2 = first_text[10:22]
        part3 = first_text[22:length]
        if send_mail(mailto_list, part1, part2, part3):
            print "send msg succeed"
        else:
            print "send msg failed"
    else:
        print "get joke error"
</code>

Scheduling with cron

On Linux, add a crontab entry to run the script every day at 7:30 am.

<code>30 7 * * * root python /root/joke.py</code>

Finally, the article encourages readers to apply similar automation ideas, such as sending weather forecasts to elders who lack internet access.