gistfile1.py

import urllib2
from lxml import etree
import json

class Browser(object):
    def get(self, url):
        response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
        return response.read()
        
if __name__ == '__main__':
    
    ns = {"b":"urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:icalendar-2.0"}
    url = "http://datastore.unm.edu/events/events.xml"
    browser = Browser()
    xml = browser.get(url)
    
    tree = etree.fromstring(xml)
    academic_events = tree.xpath('/b:icalendar/b:vcalendar/b:components/b:vevent[b:properties/b:categories/b:text/text() = "Academic Calendars - Registration"]', namespaces=ns)
    
    output = {}
    
    # Loop through all of the academic events
    for event in academic_events:
        uid = event.find('b:properties/b:uid/b:text', ns).text
        summary = event.find('b:properties/b:summary/b:text', ns).text
        description = event.find('b:properties/b:description/b:text', ns).text
        start = event.find('b:properties/b:dtstart/b:date-time', ns).text
        end = event.find('b:properties/b:dtend/b:date-time', ns).text
        
        output[uid] = {'summary': summary, 'description': description, 'start': start, 'end': end}
    
    print json.dumps(output)