NAME

WWW::Google::Groups - Google Groups Agent

SYNOPSIS

BROWSING

    use WWW::Google::Groups;

    $agent = new WWW::Google::Groups
                   (
                    server => 'groups.google.com',
                    proxy => 'my.proxy.server:port',
                   );


    $group = $agent->select_group('comp.lang.perl.misc');

    $group->starting_thread(0);     # Set the first thread to fetch
                                    # Default starting thread is 0

    while( $thread = $group->next_thread() ){
        while( $article = $thread->next_article() ){

            # the returned $article is an Email::Simple object
            # See Email::Simple for its methods

            print join q/ /, $thread->title, '<'.$article->header('From').'>', $/;
        }
    }

If you push 'raw' to the argument stack of $thread->next_article(), it will return the raw format of messages.

    while( $thread = $group->next_thread() ){
        while( $article = $thread->next_article('raw') ){
            print $article;
        }
    }

Even, you can use this more powerful method. It will try to mirror the whole newsgroup and save the messages to a Unix mbox.

    $agent->save2mbox(
                      group => 'comp.lang.perl.misc',
                      starting_thread => 0,
                      max_article_count => 10000,
                      max_thread_count => 1000,
                      target_mbox => 'perl.misc.mbox',
                      );

SEARCHING

Also, you can utilize the searching capability of google, and the interface is much alike as the above.

    $result = $agent->search(

                             # your query string
                             query => 'groups',

                             # the limit on the number of threads to fetch
                             limit => 10,

                             );

    while( $thread = $result->next_thread ){
        while($article = $thread->next_article()){
            print $thread->title;
            print length $article->body();
        }
    }

POSTING

Posting function is supported since version 0.09. The agent logins to the system, uploads your data to google, and then signs out. Use it with your own caution. Please don't make any flood.

   $agent->post(
                group => 'alt.test',
                email => 'my@email.address',
                passwd => 'my.passwd',
                subject => 'A test',
                message => 'BANG-BANG!',
                );

OH OH

It is heard that the module (is/may be) violating Google's term of service. So use it at your risk. It is written for crawling back the whole histories of several newsgroups, for my personal interests. Since many NNTP servers do not have huge and complete collections, Google becomes my final solution. However, the www interface of google groups cannot satisfy me well, kind of a keyboard/console interface addict and I would like some sort of perl api. That's why I design this module. And hope Google will not notify me of any concern on this evil.

TO DO

• Advanced Search

COPYRIGHT

xern <xern@cpan.org>

This module is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.