Question

So Here is my problem.

I want to check if a site has had any recent comments done on it.

Usually wordpress sites have their comment feed in this pattern http://www.site.com/comments/feed

Now the problem is each wp site can be in many formats of rss or atom with different fields.

I am currently working on the logic on how I can tell if there has been a new update. Any ideas

Reference sites with different formats in Rss and Atom feeds:

iamvishal.com/comments/feed
feeds2.feedburner.com/IndependentFashionBloggers
fashionweektampabayblog.com/comments/feed/

cheers,
vishal

Answer 1

Very simple solution I can think of is md5 digest.

1. Open an URL using urllib and fetch the lines and convert to string.
2. Create a md5 digest of the values and store it in a file.
3. Next time do the same and check the result from the file.
4. You need to use urllib and hashlib modules.