Collecting Style 12 chess data
Style 12 is a data format used by Internet Chess Servers and clients to exchange information about chess games.
The protocol for connecting to an Internet Chess Server is relatively simple. It is a text-based protocol. It looks like it was designed to be used by humans rather than computers, but things like Style 12 try to make it easier for computers to parse the data.
The Python code I used to collect the data is given below.
import socket
full = False
s = socket.socket()
s.connect(("freechess.org", 5000))
# Not Full: Removing game 166 from observation list.
# Full: You are already observing the maximum number of games.
f = s.makefile('rwb')
f.write(b'guest\n')
f.flush()
for line in f:
line = line.strip()
if line.startswith(b'Press return to enter the server'):
f.write(b'\n')
f.flush()
break
f.write(b'set style 12\n')
f.flush()
with open('style12.txt', 'a+') as logfile:
for line in f:
line = line.strip()
if b'Removing game' in line and b'from observation list.' in line:
full = False
if b'You are already observing the maximum number of games.' in line:
full = True
if not full:
f.write(b"observe *\r\n")
f.flush()
if line.startswith(b'<12>'):
logfile.write(f"{line.decode('utf-8')}\n")
print(line)