7 posts tagged “perl”

I had this idea last night...I can let users subscribe to feeds without leaving the mail client.
I added all the feeds as messages in the [feeds] folder, and the subscription is controlled by the status of the message.  See the screen shot to the right.

Feed subscription listing

Recent updates:

• The inbox is a collection of all your subscribed feeds
• Read/Unread status is preserved across folders (inbox/feed)
• Browse all available feeds in the [feeds] folder
  
• Add remove/feeds by setting the unread status on the message
• A Perl SMTP server handles incoming messages and processes commands
• Emails sent are not relayed
• Emails are stored in the db for future review, so suggestions and bug reports can be filed easily
• Commands can be handled, but none are added yet.
  

I may change the feed subscription model to a two folder system. A subscribed folder and an unsubscribed folder.  You would move the message that represents a feed into the subscribed folder to add it to your reading list.  This seems more intuitive than the way I implemented it.  What do you think?

It works!  Sprocket.Reader is an IMAP mail server that pulls news feeds from a database.  I'm focusing on the iPhone mail client at the moment.  It's easy to use and there are no downloads or mods required.

If you are interested in being a beta tester, email me at: xantus at xantus d.o.t org.

Here are screen shots of me reading Slashdot

Sprocket.Reader: Slashdot

Sprocket.Reader: Slashdot story

I maintain a few modules on CPAN, and not all of my modules are in my svn repo.(I know, I know, shame on me)  I wanted to capture the change history from my previous releases instead of just committing the most recent version.  My idea was to download all versions from backpan and cpan and commit them sequentially, tagging each version so I could easily diff between release versions.

Yesterday, I created some Perl scripts to do just that.  I started off by running cpansvn on Data-ObjectDriver, authored by Ben Trott, and Sprocket, authored by me.  These two modules have from 5-7 releases and are good test subjects for me.

Eventually, I'll automate the whole process, and watch all modules on CPAN....

I recently released v0.07 of Sprocket, my Perl networking framework.

What's New
Some notable changes since v0.05 include:

Added a File Descripter passing utility module: Sprocket::Util::FDpasser which uses File::FDpasser
Spread integration; plugins can pubsub
Soft Shutdown
Observer hooks; attach callbacks to events by name
Log4perl logging

The file descriptor passer allows you to send or receive file handles across processes.  This includes Sockets.  For instance, Sprocket can now take connections from Apache for things like Cometd.  See mod_handoff for the apache2 code.   I have a partially working Sprocket::Server::FDreceiver module that will accept a socket from any process and inject it into the framework as if it handled the socket in the first place.

One point Oh

Don't let the version number fool you.  It's not "1.0", but this framework is ready to help you get started on writing that server you've always wanted to write.  v1.0 is on target for release in late December.

Getting Sprocket

You can download Sprocket, or get it using CPAN.pm:

perl -MCPAN -e 'install Sprocket'

or you can check it out from svn:

svn co http://svn.xantus.org/sprocket/trunk/Sprocket/ sprocket

Thanks

Thanks go to perigrin, andyg and dec for their help!

I've been working on an IMAP server that serves up rss feeds so I can easily read feeds on my iPhone.
I got it working tonight!  It's blazingly fast, even on edge.

Screen shots of Sprocket Reader:

I've been using this little trick for email links for a while now, and I thought I would share it with my fellow voxers.  If you use linux and gmail, then keep reading...

I use gnome, for kde users, you would need to look around for 'Preferred Applications' or something to that effect.  Maybe a kde user could enlighten us?

• Select 'System' from the system task bar, 'Preferences', and 'Preferred Applications'
• On the internet tab (should be the default tab), select 'Custom' in the Mail Reader dropdown.
• In the command box, paste this:
  

perl -MURI::Escape -e '$to = shift;$to =~ s/^mailto://i;exec("firefox", "https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&cmid=22&to=".URI::Escape::uri_escape($to) );' '%s'

• Click 'close'

Now, try it out, click a link like this: Email Link

Firefox should open a new tab with a gmail compose window ready to send a message with the person's email filled in for you.

*update* - you can now embed this in your sidebar