Web page scraping

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I would like to do some simple html/web scraping to take a list of RSS feeds, go to the attached web page full story, select the “Printer Friendly” or “Printer Format” link, and then convert the subsequent clean web page to audio with text-to-speech. This is basically so I can have all my RSS feeds spoken into audio at night to be put on my ipod in the morning. Programs like iSpeakIt and NewsFan do some of this, but they either only speak the headlines, or speak the entire webpage, including all the side columns and junk.

I’d also like to do an speaking alarm clock to wake me with stock quotes, weather, appointments, and news headlines in the morning at the appropriate time. iAlarm used to do this, but doesn’t work with the news anymore or the Tiger version of iCal with each of its appointments in a separate file.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and I think something that would be quite useful and popular.

Thanks

#2

That’s not exactly a beginners script. Do a search here for “curl”. That’s a command line program that captures web pages. You’ll find lots of examples, including how to parse out links and the parts of the page you want to speak. Take a stab at it and post whatever you’ve got and I’m sure people here will be able to get you through the tough parts.