send_to_ducksboard.py

import urllib2, urllib, base64, json
from datetime import datetime
from time import mktime
import feedparser

def days_since_last_post(rss_url):
    d = feedparser.parse(rss_url)
    if not len(d.entries):
        return -1
    # get date of last blog post and convert to datetime object
    last_published = datetime.fromtimestamp( 
        mktime(d.entries[0].published_parsed))
    now = datetime.utcnow()
    return (now.date() - last_published.date()).days

def send_to_ducksboard(data, widget_url, api_key, is_delta=False):
    """Pushes data to your ducksboard widget. Data should be numeric,
    or a dict if widget is a text/leaderboard/timeline/etc... widget (see
    documentation). Use is_delta if you're dealing with incremental
    values (eg. you are specifying differences from the current value).
    """
    if is_delta:
        msg = {'delta': data}
    else:
        msg = {'value': data}

    request = urllib2.Request(widget_url)

    # ducksboard uses http basic auth, so setup headers
    auth = base64.encodestring('%s:x' % api_key)
    auth = auth.replace('\n', '')
    request.add_header('Authorization', 'Basic %s' % auth)

    return urllib2.urlopen(request, json.dumps({'value': data})).read()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    api_key = 'xxxx'
    widget_url = 'https://push.ducksboard.com/v/72221'
    days = days_since_last_post('http://blog.interstellr.com/rss')
    send_to_ducksboard(days, widget_url, api_key)