cotipoller.pl

[robject]

What it does: This script will poll COTI every 5 minutes, and display one-liner synopses of new entries. So you don't have to. Every 10 entries, it will print a divider line as a visual guide. It stores the state after a refresh, which it uses as a history to compare against in subsequent runs.

Synopsis: cotipoll.pl [polling interval [division interval]]

Defaults: Polling interval is 300 seconds. Division interval is 10 entries.

Requirements: Perl with LWP::Simple, Data:: Dumper, and of course an internet connection.

use LWP::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Indent = 1;
$Data::Dumper::Terse  = 1;

my $url = "http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/index.php";
my $dbref = {};

$/ = undef;
open IN, '<', 'coti.dat';
$dbref = eval <IN>;
close IN;

my $wait = shift || 300;
print "Polling interval: $wait s\n";

my $interval = shift || 10;
print "Division interval: $interval\n";

my $intervaln = 0;
{
   $dbref->{ 'timestamp' } = scalar localtime;
   
   my @content = ();
   my $html = get( $url );

   for my $chunk (split /<a href="forumdisplay.php/, $html )
   {
      my $forum = $1 if $chunk =~ m|<strong>(.*?)</strong>|;
      if ($forum)
      {
         my $topic = $1 if $chunk =~ m|Go to first unread post in thread (.*?)"|;
                 $topic =~ s|^.(.*).$|$1|;
             my $time  = $1 if $chunk =~ m|<span class="time">(.*?)</span>|;
             next unless $time;
          
             my $by = $1 if $chunk =~ m|find=lastposter.*?>(.*?)</a>|;
                 $forum = substr( $forum, 0, 20 );
                 $by    = substr( $by, 0, 10 );
                 $topic = substr( $topic, 0, 44 );
             my $key = sprintf "%-20s | %-10s | $topic", $forum, $by;
             unless ( $dbref->{ $key } && $dbref->{ $key } eq $time )
             {
                $dbref->{ $key } = $time;

                my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) =
                                                localtime;
                my $now = sprintf "%02d/%02d %02d:%02d:%02d", $mon+1, $mday, $hour, $min+1, $sec+1;
                push @content, "$now  $key\n"; 
                        
                open OUT, '>', 'coti.dat';
                print OUT Dumper( $dbref );
                close OUT;
             }
      }
   }

   if ( @content )
   {
      print @content;
      print '-' x 96, "\n" unless $intervaln % $interval;
      $intervaln++;
   }

   
   sleep $wait;
   redo;
}

 

[aramis]

That explains the increased robot activity...