Why not adopt me?
NAME
WWW::Yahoo::Groups - automated access to Yahoo! Groups.
SYNOPSIS
my $y = WWW::Yahoo::Groups->new();
$y->login( $user => $pass );
$y->list( 'Jade_Pagoda' );
my $email = $y->fetch_message( 2345 );
# Error catching
my $email = eval { $y->fetch_message( 93848 ) };
if ( $@ and ref $@ and $@->isa('X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups') )
{
warn "Problem: ".$@->error;
}ABSTRACT
WWW::Yahoo::Groups retrieves messages from the archive of Yahoo Groups. It provides a simple OO interface to logging in and retrieving said messages which you may then do with as you will.
DESCRIPTION
WWW::Yahoo::Groups is a subclass of WWW::Mechanize, overriding a few methods and supplying a few extra. As such, any method available in WWW::Mechanize is available to WWW::Yahoo::Groups, perhaps augmented with extra features.
Try to be a well behaved bot and sleep() for a few seconds (at least) after doing things. It's considered polite. There's a method autosleep() that should be useful for this.
If you're used to seeing munged email addresses when you view the message archive (i.e. you're not a moderator or owner of the group) then you'll be pleased to know that WWW::Yahoo::Groups can demunge those email addresses.
All exceptions are subclasses of X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups, itself a subclass of Exception::Class.
Things it does
Handles access restricted archives. It lets you login.
Handles the intermittent advertisements. It notes that it got one and progresses straight to the message.
Handles attachments. We get the source which happens to be the raw stuff.
Sanity checking. Could be improved, but it will generally barf if it doesn't understand something.
Things it is yet to do
Handle errors. Well, it does, but not as gracefully as it might in some situations.
Header restoration. I've found that some groups' archives have unusually corrupted headers. Evidently it would be beneficial to restore these headers. As far as I can tell, it comes from not being a moderator on the lists in question.
As these are recognised flaws, they are on the TODO list.
METHODS
new()
Create a new WWW::Yahoo::Groups robot.
my $y = WWW::Yahoo::Groups->new();agent()
Returns or sets the WWW::Mechanize based agent. Not for general use.
debug()
Enable/disable/read debugging mode.
$y->debug(0); # Disable
$y->debug(1); # Enable
warn "Debugging!" if $y->debug();get()
Fetch a given URL.
If debug() is enabled, then it will displaying a warning showing the URL. If autosleep() has been given an interval, then get() will sleep for that interval after successfully fetching a page.
$y->get( 'http://groups.yahoo.com' );Generally, you won't need to use this method. It's used by a number of the other methods and will throw a X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadFetch if it is unable to retrieve the specified page.
Returns 0 if success, else an exception object.
my $rv = $y->get( 'http://groups.yahoo.com' );
$rv->rethrow if $rv;
# or, more idiomatically
my $rv = $y->get( 'http://groups.yahoo.com' ) and $rv->rethrow;autosleep()
If given a parameter, it sets the numbers of seconds to sleep. Otherwise, it returns the number.
$y->autosleep( 5 );
sleep ( $y->autosleep() );May throw X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadParam if given invalid parameters.
This is used by get(). If autosleep() is set, then get() will sleep() for the specified period after every fetch.
login()
Logs the robot into the Yahoo! Groups system.
$y->login( $user => $passwd );May throw:
X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadFetchif it cannot fetch any of the appropriate pages.X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadParamif given invalid parameters.X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadLoginif unable to log in for some reason (error will be given the text of the Yahoo error).X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::AlreadyLoggedInif the object is already logged in. I intend to make this exception redundant, and add alogout()method.
logout()
Logs the robot out of the Yahoo! Groups system.
$y->logout();May throw:
X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadFetchif it cannot fetch any of the appropriate pages.X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadParamif given invalid parameters.X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::NotLoggedInif the bot is already logged out (or never logged in).
loggedin()
Returns 1 if you are logged in, else 0. Note that this merely tests if you've used the login() method successfully, not whether the Yahoo! site has expired your session.
print "Logged in!\n" if $w->loggedin();list()
If given a parameter, it sets the list to use. Otherwise, it returns the current list, or undef if no list is set.
IMPORTANT: list name must be correctly cased as per how Yahoo! Groups cases it. If not, you may experience odd behaviour.
$y->list( 'Jade_Pagoda' );
my $list = $y->list();May throw X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadParam if given invalid parameters.
See also lists() for how to get a list of possible lists.
lists()
If you'd like a list of the groups to which you are subscribed, then use this method.
my @groups = $w->lists();May throw X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadParam if given invalid parameters, or X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadFetch if it cannot fetch any of the appropriate pages from which it extracts the information.
Note that it does handle people with more than one page of groups.
first_msg_id()
Returns the lowest message number with the archive.
my $first = $w->first_msg_id();It will throw X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::NoListSet if no list has been specified with lists(), X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::UnexpectedPage if the page fetched does not contain anything we thought it would, and X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadFetch if it is unable to fetch the page it needs.
last_msg_id()
Returns the highest message number with the archive.
my $last = $w->last_msg_id();
# Fetch last 10 messages:
for my $number ( ($last-10) .. $last )
{
push @messages, $w->fetch_message( $number );
}It will throw X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::NoListSet if no list has been specified with lists(), X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::UnexpectedPage if the page fetched does not contain anything we thought it would, and X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadFetch if it is unable to fetch the page it needs.
fetch_message()
Fetches a specified message from the list's archives. Returns it as a mail message (with headers) suitable for saving into a Maildir.
my $message = $y->fetch_message( 435 );May throw any of:
X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadFetchif it cannot fetch any of the appropriate pages.X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadParamif given invalid parameters.X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::NoListSetif no list is set.X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::UnexpectedPageif we fetched a page and it was not what we thought it was meant to be.X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::NotThereif the message does not exist in the archive (any of deleted, never archived or you're beyond the range of the group).
fetch_rss()
Returns the RSS for the group's most recent messages. See XML::Filter::YahooGroups for ways to process this RSS into containing the message bodies.
my $rss = $w->fetch_rss();If a parameter is given, it will return that many items in the RSS file. The number must be between 1 and 100 inclusive.
my $rss = $w->fetch_rss( 10 );reformat_headers
This does some simple reformatting of headers. Yahoo!Groups seems to manage to mangle multiline headers. This is particularly noticable with the Received header.
The rule is that any line that starts with a series of lowercase letters or hyphens that is NOT immediately followed by a colon is regarded as being part of the previous line and is indented with a space character (as per RFC2822).
decode_protected
Given a series of digits representing an email address as encoded by Yahoo Groups this method will return the decoded address.
my $decoded = $w->decode_protected( $protected );This will throw a X::WWW::Yahoo::Groups::BadProtected if the input isn't understood and will also output some warnings to stderr.
If you get such a problem then please "BUGS" in report it and include the warnings and error.
PRIVATE METHODS
_check_protected
This checks whether a given URL is to a protected email or not. If so, returns the email address, else returns the second argment.
my $text = $self->_check_protected( $url, $text );THANKS
Simon Hanmer for having problems with the module, thus resulting in improved error reporting, param validation and corrected prerequisites. Since then, Simon also provided a basis for the lists() and last_msg_id() methods and is causing me to think harder about my exceptions.
Aaron Straup Cope (ASCOPE) for writing XML::Filter::YahooGroups which uses this module for retrieving message bodies to put into RSS.
Randal Schwartz (MERLYN) for pointing out some problems back in 1.4.
Ray Cielencki (SLINKY) for first_msg_id and "Age Restricted" notice bypassing.
Vadim Zeitlin for yahoo2mbox from which I blatantly stole some features. (Well, I say stole but yahoo2mbox is public domain).
Zainul M Charbiwala's address unmangling code was the first to be borrowed. (See WWW::Yahoo::Groups::Utils.)
BUGS
Support for this module is provided courtesy the CPAN RT system via the web or email:
http://perl.dellah.org/rt/yahoogroups
bug-www-yahoo-groups@rt.cpan.orgThis makes it much easier for me to track things and thus means your problem is less likely to be neglected.
Please include the versions of WWW::Yahoo::Groups and Perl that you are using and, if possible, the name of the group and the number of any messages you are having trouble with.
LICENCE AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright © Iain Truskett, 2002-2003. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
AUTHOR
Iain Truskett <spoon@cpan.org>
SEE ALSO
perl, XML::Filter::YahooGroups, http://groups.yahoo.com/.