Return a random line from a file when user enters a specific text

Question

I am a beginner trying to fetch a random line from a file and wondering if this code can be improved. Should I use try and catch in this case? Should I take a parameter for the function "quote"? How can I take several alternatives for searchText? (E.g. "hello", "hi" or "hey" but one is enough to return true.)

def getInputFromUser(inputText, verifier, error=None):
 """
 General function to get input from the user, repeating the question until verifier returns true
 """
 while True:
 userInput = input(inputText)
 if not verifier or verifier(userInput):
 return userInput
 elif error:
 print(error)
def quote():
 """
 Return a random line from a file if user enters the text "hello"
 """
 searchText = "hello"
 text = getInputFromUser("Enter a sentence with the words 'hello', 'hi' or 'hey': ", lambda inputText: inputText)
 if searchText in text:
 lineFetched = random.choice(open('myquotes.txt').readlines())
 print("My quote: ", lineFetched)
 else:
 quote()

• 200_success: "Enter a sentence with the word "hello"': " is broken — please fix.

Answer 1

When working with files, you should wrap open calls in a with statement like this:

if search_text in text:
 with open('myquotes.txt') as fh:
 line_fetched = random.choice(fh.readlines())
 print("My quote: ", line_fetched)
else:
 quote()

If you want to make it possible to match any of multiple words like "hello", "hi", then you'd need a helper function, for example:

def text_contains_any_of(text, words):
 for term in words:
 if term in text:
 return True
 return False

And then change your code to use this:

words = ("hello", "hi")
if text_contains_any_of(text, words):
 with open('myquotes.txt') as fh:
 line_fetched = random.choice(fh.readlines())
 print("My quote: ", line_fetched)

In the above examples I renamed the variable and method names to follow PEP8.

• momo: @ janos Thank you! How should I assign multiple words to "words"? As a list or one string?
• janos: A list or tuple. I added an example now using a tuple

Answer 2

You have defined a nice getInputFromUser() function that can loop until the desired input is received. Why not take proper advantage of it?

def quote():
 SEARCH_TEXT = "hello"
 get_input_from_user(("Enter a sentence with the word '%s': " % SEARCH_TEXT),
 lambda s: SEARCH_TEXT in s)
 with open('myquotes.txt') as f:
 print("My quote: ", random.choice(f.readlines()))