Using Python to update your FeedBurner stats

Ever since I’ve moved to my own server for my websites, I’ve wanted to reduce the number of HTTP requests per user as much as possible. Here is how I (and you) can use Python to shave 1 more request off that number.

I can do this (and remove a DNS lookup) by updating my Feedburner count using an automated script on my server instead of having each client request it.

Using the FeedBurner Awareness API

Most of the time you only care about getting your total subscribers at the moment. The FeedBurner Awareness API is far more capable than just doing that, but we’re going to keep it simple today.

For the simple case you just need your feed ID or URI. Try:

curl -s 'https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=YOUR_FEED_NAME'

You receive an XML response like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rsp stat="ok">
  <!--This information is part of the FeedBurner Awareness API.
      If you want to hide this information, you may do so via your FeedBurner Account.-->
  <feed id="foo0nbta7tscktjrgddc95gg3s" uri="EricWendelin">
    <entry date="2009-11-03" circulation="1481" hits="3901" reach="21" />
  </feed>
</rsp>

Now we just need to parse out the “circulation” which is your subscriber count.

Quick and dirty bash script

This is what I used to use until FeedBurner started returning 0s or blanks in the XML returned:

#!/bin/bash
FEED_COUNT=`curl -s https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=EricWendelin | egrep -o circulation=\&quot;[0-9]+\&quot; | egrep -o [0-9]+`

sed -r -i "s/(\"numsubscribers\">)[^<]+</\1$FEED_COUNT</g" /my/path/to/sidebar.php

echo $FEED_COUNT

You can use cron to replace some HTML, log the count, etc. every so often.

The Python

The Python version is much lengthier but has error checking and does not have to do file-replacement. The following is also available on GitHub for your extending pleasure ;).

	#!/usr/bin/env python

	# Usage: ./check_feedburner.py MyFeedName

	import re, sys, urllib, fileinput
	from xml.dom import minidom

	AWARENESS_API_URL = 'https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=%s'
	# If you want to replace the feedburner count in a given file, define it here
	FEED_COUNT_FILE = '/path/to/your/file.php'
	# HTML to replace with feed count
	COUNT_HTML_REGEX = r'REPLACEME'
	COUNT_REPLACE_STRING = r'REPLACEME%s'

	def get_circulation(feed_uri):
	dom = minidom.parse(urllib.urlopen(AWARENESS_API_URL % feed_uri))
	count = dom.getElementsByTagName('entry')[0].getAttribute('circulation')
	if count == '' or count == '0':
	print 'Error getting feed count'
	sys.exit(1)
	return count

	def replace_feedburner_count(count):
	'''Replaces feedburner count in FEED_COUNT_FILE'''
	try:
	for line in fileinput.input(FEED_COUNT_FILE, inplace=1):
	# Comma at the end of the string prevents explicitly writing a newline
	print re.sub(COUNT_HTML_REGEX, COUNT_REPLACE_STRING % count, line, 1),
	except OSError, ose:
	print 'File "%s" not found' % FEED_COUNT_FILE

	if __name__ == '__main__':
	# First arg is URI
	feed_count = get_circulation(sys.argv[1])
	print feed_count
	if FEED_COUNT_FILE:
	replace_feedburner_count(feed_count)

view raw check_feedburner.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Something like this would be especially cool if you could set thresholds or use optparse for advanced options. Useful? Hope so!

Posted on 05 Nov 2009.