Fetching blog updates from Weblogs.com using Applescript

As I mentioned earlier this week, I’m running an AppleScript once an hour to download data from Weblogs.com. For anyone who may be interested in seeing how it’s done, the code is below and is easily adaptable to other scripting languages, including DOS Batch (I know, I’ve done it). This is first pass code, not optimized, warts and all. Enjoy.

copy getWeblogsChanges() to {success, theFile}

if not success then
display dialog "Could not get the changes file from Weblogs.com."
return
end if

processWeblogsChanges(theFile)

on getWeblogsChanges()
set changesSource to "http://www.weblogs.com/changes.xml"
set theDate to current date
set theYear to year of theDate as string
set theMonth to month of theDate as string
set theDay to day of theDate as string
set theTime to time of theDate as string
-- need to prompt for the user's directory instead
set theFileName to "~/" & theYear & theMonth & theDay & theTime & "_changes.xml"
set theShellCommand to "curl " & changesSource & " > " & theFileName
--need error handling
do shell script theShellCommand
return {true, theFileName}
end getWeblogsChanges

on processWeblogsChanges(theFile)
set theShellCommand to "gzip -c " & theFile & " >>changesxml.gz"
do shell script theShellCommand
end processWeblogsChanges