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