Grabs the Astronomy Picture of the Day

getAPOD.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Grab the Astronomical Picture of the Day from NASA's site.
# Make it the desktop background, if it's a jpg
#
# Matthew Nuckolls
import urllib2
import re
import subprocess

base_url = "http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/"
matcher = r'<IMG SRC=\"([\w\d./-]+).jpg"'
filename = "/tmp/background.jpg"

#page = urllib2.urlopen(base_url + "ap120609.html")
page = urllib2.urlopen(base_url + "index.html")
page_data = page.read()
page.close()

m = re.search(matcher,page_data)
if not m:
    exit()

image_page = urllib2.urlopen(base_url + m.group(1) + ".jpg")
image = image_page.read()
image_page.close()

with open(filename, "wb") as background:
    background.write(image)

subprocess.call(['/usr/bin/osascript',
                 '-e', 'tell application "Finder"',
                 '-e', 'set pFile to POSIX file "%s" as string' % filename,
                 '-e', 'set desktop picture to file pFile',
                 '-e', 'end tell'])