WWW::BBSWatch 1.02

WWW::BBSWatch can send, via email, messages posted to a WWW bulletin board.

SYNOPSIS

use WWW::BBSWatch; # should really be a subclass

sub WWW::BBSWatch::article_list { # generates warning (rightly so)
my $self = shift;
my $content = shift;
return ($$content =~ m%($self->{bbs_url}?read=d*)%gs);<br /> }<br /><br /> BBSWatch->new(-MAIL => me,<br /> -BBS_URL => http://www.foo.org/cgi-bin/bbs.pl)->retrieve;<br /><br />There are many interesting discussions that take place on World Wide Web Bulletin Boards, but I do not have the patience to browse to each article. I can process email and newsgroups many times faster than a WWW bulletin board because of the lag inherent in the web. Instead of ignoring this wealth of information, WWW::BBSWatch was created. It will monitor a World Wide Web Bulletin Board and email new postings to you. The email headers are as correct as possible, including reasonable From, Subject, Date, Message-Id and References entries.<br /><br />This module requires LWP::UserAgent and MIME::Lite.<br /><br /><b>INTERFACE</b><br /><br />$b = WWW::BBSWatch->new<br /><br />Arguments are:<br /><br />-BBS_URL: The URL of the bulletin boards index page. This field is required.<br />-MAIL: The email address to send mail to<br />-MDA: Sets the mail delivery agent by calling MIME::Lite::send(HOW, HOWARGS). If a scalar value is passed in, it is passed as send(" sendmail?, $mda_value). If an array ref is provided, send(@$mda_value) is called.
-DB: Basename of the database that keeps track of visited articles
-WARN_TIMEOUT: Number of seconds before warning message is sent proclaiming inability to contact BBS_URL page. Default is 10,800 (3 hours).
-MAX_ARTICLES: Maximum number of articles to send in one batch. Default is essentially all articles.
-VERBOSE: Controls the amount of informative output. Useful values are 0, 1, 2. Default is 0 (completely silent).

$b->retrieve([$catchup])

This method emails new bulletin board messages. If the optional parameter catchup is true, messages will be marked as read without being emailed. Nothing useful will happen unless the article_list method is defined to return the list of articles from the BBSs index page.

WWW::BBSWatch uses the LWP::UserAgent module to retrieve the index and articles. It honors firewall proxies by calling the LWP::UserAgent::env_proxy method. So if you are behind a firewall, define the environment variable http_proxy and your firewall will be handled correctly.