Simple python script to publish an url to the Instapaper service.

instapaper.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import argparse, urllib, sys

def error(msg):
    sys.exit(msg)

def main():
    api = 'https://www.instapaper.com/api/add'

    argparser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Simple utility to add articles to an Instapaper account.')
    argparser.add_argument('url', help='url to add')
    argparser.add_argument('-u', '--username', help='account username')
    argparser.add_argument('-p', '--password', help='account password')
    argparser.add_argument('-t', '--title', default='', help='set title of article manually')
    argparser.add_argument('-d', '--description', default='', help='set description')
    argparser.add_argument('-v', '--verbose', action='store_true', default=False,
                           help='increase verbosity')

    args = argparser.parse_args()

    params = urllib.urlencode({
            'username'  : args.username,
            'password'  : args.password,
            'url'       : args.url,
            'title'     : args.title,
            'selection' : args.description # While wierd the API documentation defines the 'selection' 
                                           # parameter an  an description of the article.
            })

    r = urllib.urlopen(api, params)

    status = r.getcode()

    if status == 201:
        if args.verbose:
            print('%s saved as %s' % (r.headers['Content-Location'], r.headers['X-Instapaper-Title']))
    elif status == 400:
        error('Status 400: Bad request or exceeded the rate limit. Probably missing a required parameter, such as url.')
    elif status == 403:
        error('Status 403: Invalid username or password.')
    elif status == 500: 
        error('Status 500: The service encountered an error. Please try again later')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()