NAME

Bot::WootOff - Poll woot.com during a woot-off and notify via IRC

SYNOPSIS

use Bot::WootOff;

my $bot = Bot::WootOff->new(
    server  => "irc.freenode.net",
    channel => "#wootoff",
);

$bot->run();

DESCRIPTION

Bot::WootOff periodically polls woot.com during a woot-off and sends messages to in IRC channel to alert the user of new items.

What, you don't know what woot.com is? It's a site that sells one item a day at a discounted price. Once the item is sold out, the site runs idle for the rest of the day. But every once in a while, it switches into a mode called woot-off, where it keeps popping up new items as soon as the lot of the previous item is sold. This is called a "Woot Off", and it's something many people are looking forward to, as all items, and most of all, the legendary "Bag of Crap", can be had a bargain price. If you think all of this is silly, move on to the next CPAN module! Nice meeting you! If you're a bargain hunter, continue reading.

If you notice that there's a woot-off going on on woot.com, simply start your bot via the 'wootbot' script included in this module, like

wootbot -s irc.freenote.net -c '#wootoff'

or use the perl code in the SYNOPSIS section of this document. The bot will start up, connect to the IRC server, and log into the channel specified. It'll start polling woot.com in 30-second intervals until the next item in the woot-off will be presented. At this point, it will post a short item description to the IRC channel to alert the user of the buying opportunity:

Trying to connect to server irc.freenode.net
Trying to connect to '#wootoff0538'
2009/05/13 23:17:36 Requesting http://www.woot.com
2009/05/13 23:17:36 Apple 8GB 4th Gen iPod Nano posted to #wootoff0538

The above output can be seen if you start wootbot in verbose mode, using the -v option. It also prints status messages like

2009/05/13 23:36:23 Requesting http://www.woot.com
2009/05/13 23:36:24 Nothing changed
2009/05/13 23:36:54 Requesting http://www.woot.com
2009/05/13 23:36:54 Nothing changed

to STDOUT in regular intervals to let the user know what it's doing. When it posts messages to the IRC channel specified, it will use the nickname "wootbot" (unless you specify another nickname in the constructor). The messages will look like

(11:41:29 PM) wootbot: Forever Flashlight  III 4.99 http://www.woot.com
(11:44:32 PM) wootbot: Deluxe Charades Game 2.99 http://www.woot.com

Each message contains a link to woot.com, which will be displayed by IRC clients like Pidgin in a clickable format, so that you can reach the current offer with a single mouse click.

If someone in the channel says "!woot" then the bot will repeat its last message. This is helpful if someone just joined the channel and wants to know what the current item is.

All you have to do to receive these message is use an IRC client like Pidgin, connect to the IRC server specified (irc.freenode.net by default), log into the channel specified (#wootoffxxxx by default, where xxxx is a random number so that all of you script kiddies using this module won't step on other people's toes. Use a specific name like #wootoff to connect to the actual channel specified), and enjoy the incoming messages. Set up sounds and you'll be able to do useful work while being interrupted with the latest bargains.

Extra tip: If your IRC window in Pidgin gets full and you want the visual interruption of an empty window being filled, use CTRL-L to clear the current window.

Methods

new()

The constructor takes the following arguments:

my $bot = Bot::WootOff->new(
  irc_server       => "irc.freenode.net",
  irc_channel      => "#wootoff",
  irc_nick         => "wootbot",
  http_agent       => (__PACKAGE__ . "/" . $VERSION),
  http_alias       => "wootoff-ua",
  http_timeout     => 60,
  http_url         => "http://www.woot.com",
  http_max_retries => 30,
  poll_interval    => 30,
  Alias            => "wootoff-bot",
  spawn            => 1,
);

Some of these parameters are specific to POE, the framework driving the bot.

run()

This methods starts the bot, which usually runs until the program is terminated.

EXAMPLES

$ wootbot -s irc.freenode.net -c '#wootoff'

LEGALESE

Copyright 2009-2012 by Mike Schilli, all rights reserved. This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

2009, Mike Schilli <cpan@perlmeister.com>