Day 90 of 100 Days Coding Challenge: Python
Today I set out to give my app a voice of its own. The mission: generate a short 200–300-word historical narrative generator for whatever filters I’ve chosen. Basically, I wanted my app to play historian, skimming the top events and spitting out a digestible report. To do this, I turned to the trusty textwrap library.
Now, textwrap doesn’t sound glamorous—it’s no flashing map or animated arrow—but it does something crucial: it formats and wraps text so it looks neat and tidy. Think of it as the digital equivalent of that English teacher who insisted your essays had to fit on one page, double-spaced, 12-point font. Without it, you end up with messy, runaway text blocks. With it, you get something polished enough to pass off as a summary, a report, or maybe even a history newsletter.
It felt oddly satisfying—like giving the app its own narrator.
Today’s Motivation / Challenge
Why does this matter? Because clicking through endless events is like reading footnotes without the main text. A historical narrative generator summarizes a historical event and gives you the big picture: what happened, where it mattered, and why you should care. It’s like the “Previously on…” segment at the start of a TV show—except the show is about Mesopotamia instead of crime dramas.
Purpose of the Code (Object)
The code pulls the most important events from the current filter and stitches them into a compact narrative. It uses textwrap to make the summary readable and presentable. The end result is a neat little block of text you can generate with a button click, then edit as you see fit.
AI Prompt
We would like to add:
Narrative summary (extractive)
- Generate 200–300-word summary for current filter (extract top events).
- Accept: button produces summary; editable text area.
Functions & Features
- Extract top events from the current filter.
- Auto-generate a narrative summary (200–300 words).
- Display the summary in an editable text box for user tweaks.
- Format the text neatly with textwrap.
Requirements / Setup
You’ll need:
- Python 3.11
Installs:
pip install textwrap3 streamlit
Minimal Code Sample
import textwrap
summary = ” “.join([e.description for e in top_events])
wrapped = textwrap.fill(summary, width=80)
st.text_area(“Generated Summary”, value=wrapped, height=200)
Collects event descriptions, wraps the text neatly, and displays it for editing.
The Civilization Timeline Builder
Notes / Lessons Learned
After wiring up the function, I thought everything was ready—until I realized my civilization details had disappeared. Worse, the shiny new “Generate Summary” button was missing too. The culprit? Code order. My narrative block had slipped into the wrong conditional, pairing itself with the diffusion toggle instead of the list/detail switch.
So when diffusion was off, the else: block tried to show a nonexistent detail view, and the summary button went into hiding. Once I moved everything back under the right branch, the details returned, and my summary button reappeared like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.
Lesson learned: order matters. Functions can’t just float wherever they want—think of them like stubborn cats. If you put them in the wrong room, they’ll refuse to come out until you move them properly.
Optional Ideas for Expansion
- Add a “copy to clipboard” button for easy sharing.
- Export summaries as a text or PDF file.
- Let users choose between a short, medium, or long summary length.