syllabus-parser

Reads a column of hyperlinked cells from a Google Sheet (display text link, with a syllabus URL attached), opens each syllabus page in a headless browser, finds the «Академическая нагрузка» section, and writes the number of lectures per week and seminars per week back into the sheet.

If a row has no link attached, or the «Академическая нагрузка» section (or a specific line) can't be found, it defaults to 0 lectures and 1 seminar.

How it works

• Reads links via the Google Sheets API grid data, so it retrieves the URL embedded behind the link text (rich-text hyperlink, whole-cell hyperlink, or HYPERLINK() formula) — not just the visible text.
• Opens each page with a headless Chromium browser (Playwright), so JavaScript-rendered syllabus pages work.
• Writes only empty cells in the target columns, so re-runs are safe and won't overwrite values you already have.

Setup

1. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt
playwright install chromium

2. Create Google OAuth credentials

1. Go to the Google Cloud Console, create (or pick) a project, and enable the Google Sheets API.
2. Under APIs & Services → Credentials, create an OAuth client ID of type Desktop app.
3. Download the JSON and save it in this folder as credentials.json.

The first time you run the script it opens a browser asking you to log in and grant access; after that a token.json is cached and no browser prompt is needed.

3. Configure .env

Copy the template and fill it in:

cp .env.example .env

Variable	Required	Description
GOOGLE_SHEETS_URL	yes	Full URL of the spreadsheet.
SHEET_NAME	yes	Name of the tab that holds the links.
LINK_COLUMN	no (default D)	Column with the hyperlinked link cells.
LECTURES_COLUMN	no (default M)	Column to write lectures/week into.
SEMINARS_COLUMN	no (default N)	Column to write seminars/week into.
HEADER_ROWS	no (default 1)	Number of header rows before the data.
GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_FILE	no (default credentials.json)	OAuth client file.
HEADLESS	no (default true)	Set false to watch the browser.

Run

python syllabus_parser.py

The script prints per-row progress and a final summary of how many rows were updated vs. skipped (already filled).

Notes

• The account you log in with must have edit access to the spreadsheet.
• Numbers on the syllabus pages are expected to be digits (e.g. 2 лекции). If a page spells a number out, that metric falls back to its default.
• .env, credentials.json, and token.json are gitignored — keep them out of commits.