How to extract a random post from a random subreddit? (Reddit API)

Question

I'm trying to extract a random posting from a random subreddit in one api call, and I can't figure out how. Is this possible, and if not, how would I accomplish this with multiple api calls and minimum overhead?

The following request returns a random subreddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/random.json

Contrary to what one might expect from the json extension, the data returned from the call is a complete webpage with markup, which is not what I want. The same request with an actual subreddit is shown below.

http://www.reddit.com/r/apple.json

This request yields the apple subreddit in json format. In order to retrieve 5 postings from the apple subreddit the following api call can be made.

http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments.json?limit=5

I figured I could apply the above api call to the random url - as shown below.

http://www.reddit.com/r/random/comments.json?limit=5

This works as expected, yet the result is not in json format. It is a complete webpage with markup.

Links: The reddit API

Answer 1

Update

In the time since my original response, /r/random has been updated to preserve extensions, so you can also now avoid having to manually process the Location header:

$ curl http://www.reddit.com/r/random.json
{
"data": {
    "after": "t3_1ubf3e", 
...

Original response

http://www.reddit.com/r/random results in a redirect to a random subreddit, but does not preserve extensions. At this time, the best way to achieve your goal would be to examine the response for the Location: header, and then perform a request to the JSON endpoint for that subreddit.

For example, using curl:

$ curl --include http://www.reddit.com/r/random
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Location: http://www.reddit.com/r/cocktails/
...

reddit says you should checkout the "cocktails" subreddit, so request the JSON data for that subreddit:

$ curl http://www.reddit.com/r/cocktails/.json
{
"data": {
    "after": "t3_1ubf3e", 
...