Using Java-based API with Django

Question

I'm in the process of creating a website using Django and want to incorporate data from the Google Play Store (Android Market) into it. I've considered manually scraping the Store but it seems like it might be a slow and tedious process so I decided to consider other options, namely an open-source API called android-market-api.

The problem with android-market-api is that it is written in Java and only has Ruby/PHP ports (not sure exactly what that means). This is a problem because I want to be able to interact with the API using my existing Python code. How should I proceed with this?

• Should I try to translate the existing code into Python?

• Should I write something in Python that "communicates" with the API and translates its outputs into Python code so I can use the results with the rest of my apps?

• Should I use some existing intermediary language/module that lets Python and Java code interact seamlessly?

Or is there another alternative?

Answer 1

It says on the project description page:

Main target is java but it can be easily adapted to other languages since it's Google ProtoBuf based.

Therefore, you can tell protoc to compile the protobufs for Python, then port over the high-level API. This way you have the best control over your Python port of android-market-api.

Answer 2

There seems to be a Python Port: android-market-api-py on GitHub.