NAME

WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::phpBB - Screen scraper for phpBB installations

SYNOPSIS

use WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable;
use Log::Log4perl qw(:easy);
Log::Log4perl->easy_init($DEBUG);

my $mech = new WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable;

$mech->get("http://some.forum.site.com/forum");
$mech->phpbb_login("username", "password");

    # Get a list of forums
my $forums = $mech->phpbb_forums();
for my $forum (@$forums) {
    print "Forum:", $forum->text(), "\n";
}

    # Enter a forum matched by a regex
$mech->phpbb_forum_enter(qr(^The Forum Name$));

    # Return a list of topics
my $topics = $mech->phpbb_topics();
for my $topic (@$topics) {
    print "headline=$topic->{text} url=$topic->{url}\n";
}

DESCRIPTION

WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::phpBB is a screen scraper for phpBB driven forum sites. It can log into the phpBB web interface, pull forum and topics names and perform administrative tasks like deleting posts.

FUNCTIONALITY IS CURRENTLY LIMITED, READ ON WHAT'S AVAILABLE SO FAR.

WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::phpBB is implemented as a plugin to WWW::Mechanize, using Joe McMahon's WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable framework.

$mech->phpbb_login($user, $passwd)

Log into the phpBB web interface using the given credentials. It requires that the $mech object currently points to a phpBB page showing a "Login" link.

Note that most forums don't require you to log in in order to read the messages, so this is only necessary if you want to perform administrative tasks (like phpbb_post_remove()) or read a private forum.

Returns undef if the login fails and fires a Log4perl message at level ERROR.

my $forums = $mech->phpbb_forums()

If the $mech object points to a forum site's overview page listing the forums, phpbb_forums will return a ref to an array of forums. Every element of the array is a WWW::Mechanize::Link object and therefore has the methods text() and url to show forum name and the forum url:

    # Get a list of forums
my $forums = $mech->phpbb_forums();
for my $forum (@$forums) {
    print "Forum:", $forum->text(), " ", 
          $forum->url(), "\n";
}

$mech->phpbb_forum_enter($regex)

If the $mech object points to a forum site's overview page listing the forums, phpbb_forum_enter will have the WWW::Mechanize object enter the first forum matching the specified regex:

    # Enter a forum matched by a regex
$mech->phpbb_forum_enter(qr(^The Forum Name$));

Returns 1 on success and undef on failure.

my $topics = $mech->phpbb_topics()

If the $mech object points to a forum page listing the topics, phpbb_topics will scrape the topics off that page (which might only be a fraction of the topics available for the given forum):

    # Return a list of topics
my $topics = $mech->phpbb_topics();
for my $topic (@$topics) {
    print "headline=$topic->{text} url=$topic->{url}\n";
}

Every element of the array ref returned is a hashref, containing values for the keys text (topic headline), url (url to the first page showing this topic), count (number of postings for this topic).

$mech->phpbb_post_remove($post_id)

Note that you need to perform a successful login() before using this method. phpbb_post_remove takes a post ID (like the '6' in forum/posting.php?mode=quote&p=6), pulls up the page showing the post, clicks the 'X' button and then clicks 'Yes' in the confirmation dialog to delete the posting. Handy for automatically deleting spammer postings.

AUTHOR

Mike Schilli, m@perlmeister.com

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2006 by Mike Schilli, m@perlmeister.com

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.5 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.