October 25, 2004

Python and the Universal Feed Parser

I'm giving myself a crash course in Python. The goal is to write a script called any2rss.py that will simply serve as an HTTP GET web service based on Mark Pilgrim's Universal Feed Parser.

Has someone already done this?

It would take just one query string parameter, url, fetch whatever is at that URL, and build a valid feed in whichever flavor of RSS or Atom I want to base my XSLT on.

Caching and redirection would be supported, of course. If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since headers in the request would simply be passed along. Redirection URLs would be converted to point to the script URL with the modified url parameter value.

Posted October 25, 2004 4:25 PM
Comments

Uh yeah, I did that yesterday... before breakfast.

Posted by: JJ at October 27, 2004 6:10 PM

I've always been tempted to put computer work posts in my blog but I thought it was taboo (because my blog is not a computer work blog) - glad to see that I'm not the only one who considered mixing personal info with technical info.

Sorry, can't help with Python - I know only enough to fix what goes wrong in a script someone else wrote that I have to maintain. Isn't that the way it always works?

By the way, we met on a Cedar Ridge hike along the C&O canal a couple of years ago - I recall you referring to me as, "One of the geekiest of the geeks." I have to throw that back at you now - have fun with Python.

Posted by: Dianne at October 28, 2004 3:02 PM