Fetch a random image referenced by Bing News RSS thumbnails.

gistfile1.py

import urlparse
import urllib2
import BeautifulSoup as Soup
import random

class BingSource:
    def __init__( self ):
        self.rss_url = "http://www.bing.com/news/?format=RSS"

    def get_image_url( self ):
        
        image_url = None
        
        # fetch RSS data, parse into BeatifulSoup
        h = urllib2.urlopen( self.rss_url )
        soup = Soup.BeautifulStoneSoup( h.read() )
        
        # iterate over items in feed
        items = soup.findAll( "item" )
        item = None
        safety = len( items )
        while (image_url is None) and (safety > 0):
            # pick a random item
            item = random.choice( items )
            if item:
                # check item has an image node
                image_node = item.find("news:image")
                if image_node:
                    # get query section of image node url
                    query = urlparse.urlparse( image_node.string )[4]
                    # urldecode the field named 'q' in the querystring
                    q = urlparse.parse_qs( query )["q"]
                    # set image_url
                    image_url = q[0]
            safety -= 1
        
        return image_url

if __name__ == '__main__':
    url_source = BingSource()
    print url_source.get_image_url()