hackernews2rss.py

import simplejson
import urllib
import PyRSS2Gen

hn_url = "http://news.ycombinator.com/"

#Run the YQL and get the JSON back
yql_url = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=%20select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20url%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fnewest%22%20and%20xpath%3D'%2F%2Ftd%5B%40class%3D%22title%22%5D%2Fa'&format=json&callback="
yql_results = urllib.urlopen(yql_url) #The query will return JSON
yql_json = simplejson.load(yql_results)
results = yql_json['query']['results']['a']

#Construct the RSS
rss = PyRSS2Gen.RSS2(title = "news.ycom Newest posts",link = "http://news.ycombinator.com/newest",description = "RSS feed of all the newest posts.")

for item in results:
	if item['href'].count("http://") <= 0:
		item['href'] = hn_url + item['href']
	rss.items.append(PyRSS2Gen.RSSItem(title=item['content'],link=item['href'],guid=item['href']))

#Save the file
rss.write_xml(open("news.xml", "w"))