Telehack Badge Compare-er 🤷‍♂️

A simple script to compare badges for two Telehack users. Uses the /u/username.json API, rather than the older HTML user page /u/username URL.

Requirements

For local (system-managed) Python installations: run pip3 install requests prior to running the script per "Usage."

⚠️ Consider using a virtual environment (venv) if you are using an externally-managed Python3 installation such as via Homebrew for macOS, as outlined below:

cd /path/to/this/local/repo
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

This will create a new Python virtual environment (venv) and activate it, which should change your shell prompt as a reminder.

Next,

pip3 install requests

The last line will install the requests module, along with its dependencies, which are:

certifi==2025.7.14
charset-normalizer==3.4.2
idna==3.10
requests==2.32.4
urllib3==2.5.0

You can verify successful installation if you wish by running pip3 freeze.

Now, deactivate the virtual environment: deactivate

Then, modify th_badge_cmp.py, replacing the existing shebang to reflect the virtual environment we just created: #!/home/user/myproject/venv/bin/python

Finally, save the file. Oh, the things we Mac users have to deal with! Seriously though, a virtual environment is the best way to do this if you installed Python3 with Homebrew.

Usage:

  $ ./th_badge_cmp.py <user1> <user2>

Contributing:

Pull requests are welcome but if you created a virtual Python3 environment using the instructions above, kindly restore the original shebang until I can work out a more universal solution: #!/usr/bin/env python3

Credits:

• drsleepy Telehack | GitHub

  • Original script creator; I originally forked and tried to submit a PR with these improvements but they fell into limbo.

• pbernicc Telehack | GitHub

  • Added colours, made use of the JSON endpoint

• underwood Telehack | GitHub

  • Pushed it through the Pylint cheese-cloth