Using the 'requests' module in Python, initiate a session with citeulike.org and run queries on citeulike accounts

citeulike_init_session.py

# citeulike_init_session.py
#
# by Phillip Kent
#
# Using the 'requests' module in Python [http://docs.python-requests.org], initiate a session with citeulike.org 
# to generate a login cookie. A simple function cquery is defined to make queries on a specified citeulike account and
# return results as a Python dictionary (equivalent to JSON format)
#
# You can use this interactively on the Python commandline by running:
#  $ python -i citeulike_init_session.py
#
# https://gist.github.com/phillipkent
# http://www.phillipkent.net

import requests
import json

# ***Replace 'phillipkent' with the citeulike account name that you want make queries on***
def cquery(querytags):
    data = requests.get('http://www.citeulike.org/json/user/phillipkent' + querytags,cookies={'login':loginCookie})
    return data.json()

# Do login to citeulike.org
# ***Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with your own account details***
session=requests.post('http://www.citeulike.org/login.do',data='username=USERNAME&password=PASSWORD&perm=1')

# Extract the login cookie
loginCookie=session.request.headers['Cookie'].split(';')[0].split('=')[1]

# Use cquery to get JSON output from citeulike, for example 
#  cquery('/tag/computer-networks')
#  cquery('/tag/computer-networks/author/hartpence')

# Use json.dumps() to pretty-print query results for readability, for example
#  print json.dumps(cquery('/tag/computer-networks/author/hartpence'), indent=4, separators=(',', ': '))