Feeds, python and the creation of tool

Last Update: 07.12.2006. By azarai in python | spreadshirt

Last time we saw how easy it is to aggregate some feeds and present them on a web page. This time i am gonna create a tool using python and feed parsing. Nope its not another aggreagtor, i had a different need.

The Problem:
My girlfriend ist running a shop (zipzack.com) powered by the spreadshirt service. For those who dont know, its similiar to cafepress. The shop system generates a rss feed and so we thought of to show the latest products on a teaser page on request. Too bad that rss feed is most of the time too slow. She needs the teaser, so i have to find a solution

The Solution:
The teaser for a product is mostly a simple xhtml snippet, styled by css. I am lazy, so we generate that snippets out of the rss feed with an option how the snippet should look like. For now a pure div and a outer div with table layout are supported .

A running online version is available at SpreadProductXHMTLProducer. Feel free to test and comment it :-)

The Code:
I am going to post it, but not now. I need to cleanup a few things until its ready for the public, but i will provide it in the next few days.

Further developing:
I thought about generating the whole teaser page out of it, but are not sure yet how to select the products you want to show on it. Maybe someone has an idea??? How about new features? Tell me what you’d like to see.