simple.py

from urllib import urlencode, urlopen
from xml.etree.cElementTree import fromstring

appId = 'appid'

def search(query, format=('plaintext', )):
    return parseWolframAlphaResponse(urllib.urlopen('http://api.wolframalpha.com/v2/query?%s' % (
            urlencode(
                {
                    'appid': appId,
                    'input': query,
                    'format': ','.join(format)
                }
            )
        )
    ).read())

def parseWolframAlphaResponse(response, redirected = False):
    xmlTree = fromstring(response)
    recalculate = xmlTree.get('recalculate')
    if recalculate:
        if not redirected:
            return parseWolframAlphaResponse(urllib.urlopen(recalculate).read(), True)
        else:
            return 'Error', 'Too many redirects.'
    else:
        success = xmlTree.get('success')
        if success == 'true':
            out = []
            for pod in xmlTree.findall('pod'):
                title = pod.get('title')
                plaintext = pod.find('subpod/plaintext')
                if plaintext is not None and plaintext.text:
                    out.append((title, plaintext.text.split('\n')))
                    
            return True, out
        else:
            return False, [tip.get('text') for tip in xmlTree.findall('tips/tip')]