get_hubble_images.pl

## script to use the hubble json api to download images to your harddrive.
## modify to suit.

use JSON;
use IO::Pipe;
use IO::File;

my $hubble_data;

my $pipe = IO::Pipe->new();
$pipe->reader(qw{curl -d action=all-images http://www.hubblesite.org/gallery/album/show/});

while (<$pipe>) {
    $hubble_data .= $_;
}


my $image_url_prefix = 'http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-';
my $image_re = qr/(^\d{4})\/(\d{1,2})\/image\/(.+)$/;

my $data_parser = sub {
    my $row = shift;
    my ($y, $n, $alpha) = $row->{i} =~ $image_re;
    my $url = $image_url_prefix . "$y-$n-$alpha-xlarge_web.jpg";
    $row->{url} = $url;
    $row->{title} = $row->{t};
    delete $row->{t};
    return $row;
};       

my @list = map { $data_parser->($_); } @{from_json($hubble_data)};

for my $img (@list) {
    my $file;
    eval {
        warn "downloading: " . $img->{url};
        $file = $img->{title} . ".jpg";
        $file =~ s/\s+/_/g;
        
        
        my $pipe = IO::Pipe->new();
        $pipe->reader(curl => $img->{url});
        my $fh = IO::File->new("> $file");
        while (<$pipe>) {
            print $fh $_;
        }
        $fh->close();
    }; 
    if ($@) {
        warn "Failed to download: ". $img->{url};
        unlink $file;
    }
}