Can Node Materials be accessed with Python scripting?

I’ve had no luck finding how to create Node Materials via Python. Is it really not available, or am I just looking in the wrong places? I’m making an importer for a 3D format that (occasionally) uses multipass materials.

Edit: this post confirms that it’s not possible -_-

Unfortunately you cannot manage nodes from within python, i.e. creating them, hooking them up, etc. if that’s what you’re looking to do.

You could possibly write pynodes to do some stuff, but programmatic layout and manipulation isn’t possible in 2.49