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So, to be a little more specific I'm looking for an API that will let me see what news stories are currently trending on-line. So for example, if there was a terrorist attack in let's say Toronto, it would probably be the top story everywhere. So I'd like to be able to pull to grab a few articles, and headlines relating to "Bombing in Toronto", or "Kim Kardashian's does something that really isn't news, but everybody is talk about it anyways" for example. It would be even better if I was able to get top news stories by region.

What I'm building is pretty simple. Just a website where you get paired up with a random person, with a prompt regarding a current event, and a few articles pertaining to that event, then you can talk to said person about it. Because somebody will ask, I'm building it as part of the application process for a computer science/business program for 3rd/4th year C.S students to create their own start up, get paid for it, and receive government funding. They just want us to create something to show our programming ability, and what we can come up with in a week as part of the selection proses.

I was thinking about using Google Trends for this, but there doesn't seem to be an official API for it, and the Unofficial ones I've found are rather basic, which is fine, but I'd like to have a more full featured API if possible, even if it uses something other than Google Trends, as long as it works well.

Also, I'm trying to find one that supports Python 2.7, but I'd also be open to using one for another language, such as Java, PHP, or really anything else, even if I don't really know that language, I'd still very much appreciate the suggestion and even if I don't use it, I'm sure someone else will. Right now I'm planning on using App Engine, (probably)Django and the messaging API they have with app engine now, but I'm willing use something else if need be.

Adam LeBlanc
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    What about using RSS for any news website? I know you are asking for an API, but maybe you will end up creating a 'shareable' RSS. – Eric Martinez Jul 12 '15 at 16:32
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    @EricMartinez I thought about that, but I decided the issue with that would be that I wouldn't be able to decide what stories people were actually talking about, and which ones were just the fluff, give the guy something to do stories of the day. – Adam LeBlanc Jul 12 '15 at 17:39

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You might look at Twitter's excellent API. You can pull out trending topics based on specific locations or "Worldwide". Here's the documentation.

https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/trends/place

kieranpotts
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  • aha! I never thought of using Twitter's API. I'm not big on social media, so I forgot about their Trending topics thing. Thanks! – Adam LeBlanc Jul 12 '15 at 16:31
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    Just to let you know, I did use your suggestions. I have a little test thing set up, and I'm using Twitter Trends to filter RSS feeds from news websites. It seems to working well. Thanks for the suggestion! – Adam LeBlanc Jul 12 '15 at 18:44
  • Cool. Thanks for the update. :) – kieranpotts Jul 13 '15 at 07:11