Slurp npm registry into a plain text format

slurp_npm.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import urllib

import ijson

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    url = 'http://registry.npmjs.org/-/all'
else:
    url = sys.argv[1]

input = urllib.urlopen(url)
parser = ijson.parse(input)

ignored_events = ['start_map', 'end_map', 'start_array', 'end_array',
                  'map_key']

for prefix, event, value in parser:
    if event in ignored_events:
        continue

    if event == 'string':
        value = value.encode('utf-8')

    print "{} {}".format(prefix, value)