def getDescription(pdbidList):
	dom = _getFromPDB(pdbidList)
	return _extractInfo(dom)

def _getFromPDB(pdbidList):
	"Return the PDB document object model (DOM) for the given id"
	PDB_URL = "http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/rest/describePDB"
	req = "%s?structureId=%s" % (PDB_URL, ",".join(pdbidList))
	print req
	from urllib2 import urlopen
	f = urlopen(req)
	from xml.dom.minidom import parse
	dom = parse(f)
	f.close()
	return dom

def _extractInfo(dom):
	"Extract fields for all PDB elements in document"
	info = list()
	for e in dom.getElementsByTagName("PDB"):
		attrMap = e.attributes
		d = dict()
		for i in range(attrMap.length):
			a = attrMap.item(i)
			d[a.name] = a.value
		info.append(d)
	return info

#
# Functions for manipulating dictionaries returned by "getDescription"
#
def name(d):
	return d["structureId"].lower()

def title(d):
	return d["title"].title()

def dump(d):
	for name, value in d.iteritems():
		print "\t%s:\t%s" % (name, value)

if __name__ == "__main__":
	import pprint
	pprint.pprint(getDescription(["4hhb", "1gcn"]))