Feedparser - Retrieve Old Messages From Google Reader

I'm using the feedparser library in python to retrieve news from a local newspaper (my intent is to do Natural Language Processing over this corpus) and would like to be able to re

Solution 1:

You're only getting a dozen entries or so because that's what the feed contains. If you want historic data you will have to find a feed/database of said data.

Check out this ReadWriteWeb article for some resources on finding open data on the web.

Note that Feedparser has nothing to do with this as your title suggests. Feedparser parses what you give it. It can't find historic data unless you find it and pass it into it. It is simply a parser. Hope that clears things up! :)

Solution 2:

To expand on Bartek's answer: You could also start storing all of the entries in the feed that you've already seen, and build up your own historical archive of the feed's content. This would delay your ability to start using it as a corpus (because you'd have to do this for a month to build up a collection of a month's worth of entries), but you wouldn't be dependent on anyone else for the data.

I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that's how Google Reader can go back in time: They have each feed's past entries stored somewhere.