Developer shares lessons from parsing real WhatsApp chat exports

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A developer tested a parser for WhatsApp's "Export chat" files on 28 public open-source exports and generated files spanning over 40 locale and platform profiles. Several assumptions failed, most notably that date order is unstated and must be inferred from the whole file, or confirmed by the user when ambiguous. The article also covers timezone handling, identifying the exporter from display names, and iPhone-specific invisible marks that can cause system notices to parse as fake participants. Further pitfalls include bidirectional text overrides, inconsistent encodings, multilingual system phrases, and attachment filename matching, along with security limits for untrusted archives.

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Tracking Google Flights prices with Python via a scraper, no API key needed

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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