For the very least that highlighting has to resemble my Vim colorscheme. ;-)

So I wrote the following to read my (custom) color scheme file and create a corresponding CSS to be used with the "jaap" variation Corion supplied.

Disclaimer: This is far from a full-fledged vimscript parser/interpreter. It just reads a color scheme (try "zellner.vim" it should at least work with that) with the diamond operator and only "knows" about the "highlight" command from Vim. I hope it interprets at least this reasonably close to Vim's implementation.

If you actually produce something useful with if you have to host that CSS file somewhere and refer to it instead of the file Corion provided on his own site.

Update: Added some minimal comments.

As you might deduce from the questions in there, I'm not really a vimscript programmer. And I also didn't bother to mock with my vim files to test those. :-(

A lightweight CB Mirror similar to cblast35.

No DB needed at all. Uses the 'modern' xml feed so it can provide properly parsed output.

Set up mini-cb60-fetch.pl on cron job (--sleeptime=0) or as an always running daemon. Set up mini-cb-render.pl as a CGI script for access.

If the CGI parameter 'domain' is provided and is one of 'org','com' or 'net' then that domain will be used for the PM specific links.

This is just a proof of concept for an incremental, low load, PM-parsed CBlast 60.

Update:

• v0.01001: Removed superfluous use of DDS (hangover from initial dev). Added $VERSION to the render code. Trivial changes.
• v0.02: Added cookie support, better defaults. Other minor changes.

Arunbear has kindly made this available online. Many thanks to Arunbear for doing so.
Version 0.02 as posted below is running on http://mini-cb60.datenzoo.de. Thanks to corion for support in getting this set up. The latest version will be available at this site until further notice.

MAILTO=steve@fink.com

#      r----minute
#      |  r-----hour
#      |  |  r------day of the month
#      |  |  |  r------month
#      |  |  |  |  r------day of the week
#      |  |  |  |  |    r------ command to run ---------->
#      |  |  |  |  |    |
       0 10  *  *  *    /home/sfink/bin/whore
       0 18  *  *  *    /home/sfink/bin/whore
[download]

It will also keep a complete historical log of all the changes.

It tells you how many XP you have until your next modular promotion. It also makes change. Here's some sample output.

XP = 16780
16780.00 initiates
839.00 novices, 0 to promotion
335.60 acolytes, 30 to promotion
167.80 scribes, 80 to promotion
83.90 monks, 180 to promotion
33.56 friars, 280 to promotion
16.78 abbots, 780 to promotion
10.49 bishops, 780 to promotion
7.30 pontiffs, 680 to promotion
5.59 saints, 1780 to promotion
5 saints, a bishop, scribe, acolyte, novice, and 10 initiates

********** RESULTS **********
2 time(s): Perl Sensitive Sunglasses
7 time(s): more useful options
9 time(s): Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister
3 time(s): XP is just a number
8 time(s): Welcome to the Monastery
5 time(s): Think about Loose Coupling
3 time(s): P is for Practical
4 time(s): Syntactic Confectionary Delight
4 time(s): Perl Monk, Perl Meditation.
7 time(s): Your skill will accomplish what the force of many cannot
8 time(s): "be consistent."
5 time(s): go ahead... be a heretic
8 time(s): Keep It Simple, Stupid
6 time(s): laziness, impatience, and hubris
4 time(s): Perl: the Markov chain saw
10 time(s): There's more than one way to do things.
3 time(s): Just another Perl shrine
4 time(s): good chemistry is complicated,and a little bit messy-LW

This is a Janitors tool script used to retitle threads. It doesn't work for non-Janitors.

This script replaces Janitors Thread Retitler v1 and Janitors Thread Retitler v2. Unlike previous versions, it requires PerlMonks::Mechanized. This dependancy has facilitated simplifying the code and the adding of "prepare / commit" transactions, allowing Janitors to see all changes before deciding on whether or not to commit them to reality.

Using the -help option on the commandline will give usage details. As before, the -debug option will cause the script to do everything except committing the changes, and /msg'ing the author.

Basic usage is:

Other improvements:

• -from option now functions like a search string instead of a full-title match. -from is now mandatory.
• -to is now a replace string, instead of a full new title.
• -prompt (default) causes an "are you sure" prompt to occur prior to committing changes. -noprompt will suppress this failsafe measure.
• -msg (default) causes a simple notification to be sent to the author of the base node via /msg. -nomsg will suppress notification.
• -ascribe (default) causes simple Janitor attribution at the bottom of the base node. -noascribe (or -noattribute) will suppress Janitor attribution.
• -unconsider (default) will cause the base node to be unconsidered. -nounconsider (or -nou for short) will suppress this feature.
• $ENV{PMUSER} and $ENV{PMPASS} must be set in your environment for login to occur.
• All commandline option names may be abbreviated as one letter (-to = -t, -from = -f, -ascribe = -a). For options such as -ascribe, -prompt, and -msg, their negative abbreviations are -noa, -nop, -nom
• Edit attribution code now appends the following to the end of the base node being retitled: Retitled by [username] from 'old title'.
• Wrapped author name in [ ... ] brackets to fix bug where automated /msg couldn't be sent to folks with whitespace in their username.
• Added a sanity check to prevent automated /msg from being sent to our friend, Anonymous Monk.

Please post questions, additional needs, comments, etc., in this thread so they're all in one place, and so I can respond here. I hope you find this helpful.

Enjoy!

It's Christmas day in LA, and here's my present to the Monastery (whether you see it as a diamond or a lump of coal remains to be determined). Merry Christmas all...

This is Yet Another Attempt to gather Monastery automation tools under one roof. The following is a module, PerlMonks::Mechanized, which mechanizes many of the common PM tasks. It makes using the Monastery's XML tickers a trivial task, for example. I intend to polish it, and add features on request. For now, it just has what I have needed myself recently, plus a little more. But as requests come in, if they're well thought-out, I'll add them. I'm also very interested in comments that will help me to improve it. At this point, I don't consider any part of this module stable (not even its interface). But if people like it, I'll stabilize it, properly document it, and continue adding to it/ maintaining it. For now, this is a rough-draft.

It uses $ENV{PMPASS} and $ENV{PMUSER} for login info, or you can supply them as user, passwd to my $monk = PerlMonks::Mechanize->new($user,$passwd);

Here is a simple example...

use strict;
use warnings;
use PerlMonks::Mechanized;

my $monk = PerlMonks::Mechanized->new();

$monk->say( "Hello.  This is a PerlMonks::Mechanized test." );
[download]

The preceeding code assumes you've set your login env variables. The code only logs you in to the Monastery if the action you're requesting requires a login. Otherwise, you stay logged out. Login is on demand, assuming you've supplied the proper login info. Janitors can also use this for node edits / retitling. I'll be reworking the retitler to take advantage of this module's features.

The code is well commented. Start your reading at the beginning of the PerlMonks::Mechanized package (ie, ignore the Janitor package until you've read PM::Mech first. Then if you're a janitor, go back and read the Janitor class). All public functions are documented at least enough that with the help of Data::Dumper you'll know what they're doing.

Enjoy!

This script has been replaced by Janitors Thread Retitler v3.1.

This script is for use by Janitors. It won't work for you if you're not a Janitor (unless you're a janitor you don't need it).

This is an improved version of Janitors Thread Retitler v1. I have made the following changes and improvements by popular request. I believe I've implemented just about all of the suggestions. Hopefully this will make the script more usable.

• Added a -from command line arg. This arg. is optional. If supplied, it allows you to specify on the command line the original node title. This will bypass the runtime "are you sure?" query, allowing the script to run without interaction.
• Added a sanity check for empty node ID lists.
• Changed the submit click method to expand compatibility to older versions of WWW::Mechanize.
• Removed requirement for WWW::Mechanize 0.74 or newer.
• Added logic to allow subthreads as base targets.
• Improved command line argument names, and allowed abbreviations.
• Added janitor edit attribution in base node. This can be customized or squelched.
• Added help/usage/POD/manpage (aided by Pod::Usage).
• Updated: Added ENV settings for user/passwd, per Corion's suggestion.

Please run the script with the -help option to learn about the improvements to its user interface. Also, please run it once in -debug mode to test it before firing it off live for the first time.

Note that even though its flexibility has been greatly expanded, it may still be used exactly as the original version if you prefer to not learn its new features.

I believe at this point I've addressed the bulk of the suggestions / needs discussed in the thread for the original Janitors Thread Retitler v1. But I'm still open for suggestions on how this might be made more useful.

Update:

Still working on...:

• Implement .ini profile for default janitor attribution text.
• Add -u switch (-unconsider) to automate unconsidering base node.
• Implement tye's regexp approach for title text substitution.
• Allow user/passwd to be read from .ini file if not found in %ENV.
• Implement multiple janitor attribution texts, to be selected by keyword from command line arg. Ex: -attr "old" would pull in the text associated with the keyword 'old' in the INI file. ...this may or may not ever get done. ;)
• Patches welcome!!!

There is a newer version of this code posted at Janitors Thread Retitler v2. Both of these have been replaced by Janitors Thread Retitler v3.1.

This is a new retitler for the Janitors to use in retitling entire threads. It won't work if you're not a janitor, as it requires an edit page only available to the Monastery's cleanup crew. If you're a Janitor, and are tired of manually retitling nodes one by one, and would like an alternative to Janitors' Tools - Bulk node retitler, read on.

Usage is:

To configure for your system you just need to configure the script with your username and password, on or around line 13 and 14, $user and $passwd.

It works by fetching the XML Node Thread ticker for the thread specified by the command-line arg "-id NNNNNN". It walks the thread's XML footprint picking each node ID along the way. It then grabs the original title of the root node, and asks for confirmation before proceeding.

Finally, it uses the editor's view to update the titles for each node id. It leaves "Re:" and "Re^N:" alone, and skips any node whos title is different from the root node's title. That way if someone has intentionally used a different title in a followup it will leave that alone.

In debug mode, this script simply skips the final step where it normally would submit the change.

It requires WWW::Mechanize version 0.74 or newer. The version currently available on ActiveState PPM is 0.72, so if you're an ActiveState user you'll have to upgrade WWW::Mechanize through some other means. The most recent version is 1.05, but anything from 0.74 on is fine.

This was my first dive into using WWW::Mechanize to fill in forms, and it was an educational experience. I'm aware that a similar tool already exists, but I wanted to work through it myself for the practice. My tool uses the XML ticker, which may be less fragile than Corion's bulk-node retitler (no offense to Corion; it was he who pointed out this fact, and the XML ticker wasn't available when he wrote his retitler).

Since it's a learning experience, I welcome any comments or suggestions for improvement.

Janitors, enjoy!

Updated to expand usefulness to older style "Re: Re:" titles too.

Really only useful to the gods, though possibly of interest to all Cabal: This is a quick way to check to see if any of the wikis are needing rotation.

My first time logging into the Monastery with WWW::Mechanize as myself (instead of just scraping anonymously), and my first time fetching Monastery pages via the xml displaytype. More straightforward than I expected. XML++.

I hope it comes in handy.

This program is intended to be used as a procmail filter. It accepts e-mail from the internet, finds the SprintPCS Picture Share and uploads the first picture it finds as your monkpic. The program requires a small amount configuration - you must add a line after the __DATA__ marker to indicate the e-mail address to expect messages from and then your username and password. This is designed to allow multiple users to be served by the same script so if you can't run this locally I can be a gateway for you. Send me a message if you're interested.

The image fetching portion of the code is separated from the image uploading portion so someone could rewrite it for the other services as well.

# Add to your .procmailrc

PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail
INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/rc.picturemail

# Add to your .procmail/rc.picturemail

:0:
* pcs2pm@grenekatz.org
|/home/josh/bin/pmail

Requires java 1.4.x and is easily installable via Java Web Start.

This fetches the front page, does a quick guess at which nodes are questions and produces a histogram of the dates and how many nodes there are from each. I use it to check when the page is getting old and people aren't front-paging enough.

It'd be nicer if someone else were to package this into a CGI (remember to use a cache) and give us all a link. Or better yet... have to auto /msg people or tell the CB or something.

This is "pmnodecomp-blockquoter", and if you can say that 5 times and still chew salt-water taffy afterwards you get a prize. It's a helper for working in a Xterm shell and composing node text for posts here on Perlmonks. If you are replying to an existing node and wish to cite a brief part of what a previous poster has written, you may like to do so using a style that embraces the quote text in <blockquote> tags. This makes it visually stand out as being text attributable to another poster than yourself.

A cryptographically signed copy of the latest release of the program may also be obtained at the site:
here.

---

Update:

Now does what theorbtwo's reply and bart's reply wanted it to do. Also fixed a few other flaws. We now have a plugin-ready script that users can invent their own transmutations for.

Also the example shown below ought to be something like this instead (but see later at Second Update for an even better plan):

Then I switch to a text term (Xterm) and type:

$ pmnodecomp-blockquote <<'NOPOL8N'

which waits for me to paste the X cutbuffer / clipboard selection at the prompt.

• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
• INTERFACE
• %pm_nodetype
• &pm_url
• &pm_ticker
• &pm_login
• &pm_time2unix
• BUGS
• AUTHOR
• LICENSE

NAME

PerlMonksFacts - codified knowledge about the automation interfaces of PerlMonks.org

SYNOPSIS

 use PerlMonksFacts;
 use URI;

 my $uri = URI->new(pm_url);
 $uri->query_form(pm_ticker xp => 'Aristotle');
 print $uri->as_string, "\n";

DESCRIPTION

This module abstracts working with the PerlMonks.org automation interfaces. The main purpose is to put PerlMonks.org ticker URL generation in a blackbox. As such, the main point of the module is the pm_ticker function.

Since this module is intended to be as abstract as possible, the pm_ticker and pm_url functions return raw key/value pairs. Their actual use is up to you; see the SYNOPSIS for an example of building a URI suitable for use in a HTTP GET request from them.

INTERFACE

%pm_nodetype

This hash contains a mapping of PerlMonks.org-internal node type names to human readable versions. It is mostly cribbed from the code of the live Super Search page of PerlMonks.org.

&pm_ticker

This function takes the name of a ticker and possibly parameters for it and returns a list of key/value pairs for URL construction. The following ticker names are recognized:

nn, newest nodes xml generator

Takes one parameter - a perlfunc/time style timestamp.

xp, XP xml ticker

Optionally takes one parameter - a user name or user homenode ID for whose XP should be tracked.

cb, chatterbox xml ticker

No parameters.

msg, private message xml ticker

No parameters.

users, other users xml ticker

No parameters.

query, node query xml generator

Takes any number of parameters, which should be node IDs for the nodes to query.

usernodes, user nodes info xml generator

Takes one parameter: the user whose nodes are to be returned.

thread, xml node thread

No parameters.

&pm_login

This function takes a username and password as parameters and returns a list of key/value pairs for URL construction.

&pm_time2unix

This function takes a timestamp in the format used in PerlMonks-generated XML and returns a perlfunc/time style timestamp.

BUGS

&pm_ticker does not yet implement the types parameter nor the days parameter to the newest nodes ticker.

AUTHOR

Aristotle Pagaltzis pagaltzis@gmx.de

LICENSE

This software is in the public domain. It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

From time to time, a janitor has to clean up a thread where the original poster chose a bad title for his question. If the janitor is too late, there are many nodes to retitle. This WWW::Mechanize script automates this process.

Of course, this script will only work, if you are a janitor, and it will break horribly if the PerlMonks HTML changes enough.

Update: castaway noted that the retitler broke due to recent changes in how internal links are done. The current version fixes that.

Note: This is fairly similar in idea to OeufMayo's drawmap.pl, but it's a different approach. I don't think that it suffers from the "negative zero" bug that jcwren's code did (and perhaps still does)

I'm sat in an office with no external windows and spookily flat lighting. I decided to run xearth to give me some idea of the sun's position. Like a good geek, I put my location into the xearth markerfile, and carried on with my day.

A little while later, remembering the location tags that monks can put on their homenodes (documented here ), I thought it might be interesting to put some other monks on the map. Besides, it seemed like a good opportunity to use LWP::Simple and XML::Simple.

Caveats: The code's a dirty hack:

• This code doesn't use HTML parsing modules to extract the HTML comment containing the location information. It splits based on newlines, and then uses a few regexen to extract the information. This is one of many Wrong Ways to do it, but I'm not really trying to parse, just extract one bit of info.
• It uses Text::Table to output the text in a pretty-printed text table. You could change easily if you don't have this module.

Usage: Put your desired monks in the @monks array, then run the code. You probably want to append the output to your xearth markerfile. Note that this should also work for xplanet, the much prettier xearth alternative.

Fixed broken '/strong' tag - dvergin 2003-03-18

The HTML::Entities module is used in the final step to decode the entities in the node content. More work could be done here like linking PM shortcuts ([id://], [cpan://], etc.), but since we already have a functioning print mode for nodes, why bother? :) This is simply here as a reference for further exploration. (it doesn't even work well on this type of node - Code Catecombs).

UPDATE: added a default node per PodMaster's request.

Like cblast35, keeps a history of messages that go through the chatterbox. This one uses a database (postgresql) to store the messages instead of a DB file. It keeps the last hour's worth of messages.

Try it at http://nbpfaus.net/~pfau/cbhistory.cgi.

A little while back in the CB, someone (forgive me, I have forgotten who), mentioned it would be interesting to see the age distribution of those monks who have reported their ages for the PerlMonks Stats Pages. So I decided to take a stab at generating such stats.

The script currently pulls up the upcoming birthdays page and scrapes the age information out, then outputs the requested file format (HTML or PNG). A future version might pull XML data from the server instead when it is available.

Examples: HTML Output, Summary Graph, Detail Graph.

Update: T'was dada that proposed the age stats in the CB. Thanks for the reminder ;)
Changed PDF to PNG in the comments.

Update: Ack! Looks like ar0n beat me to this almost a whole year ago: hup - home node updater. Thanks for pointing this out ybiC, and don't blame me - blame ar0n! :D

Three Scripts for the Acolytes under the sky,
seven for the Friar-lords in their halls of stone,
nine for Mortal Bishops doomed to die,
one for the Dark Saint on his dark throne
in the Land of Monkwhore where the Black Stats lie.
One Mod to rule them all,
one Mod to find them,
one Mod to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them
in the Land of Monkwhore where the Black Stats lie.

A module that encapsulates behavior and code from jcwren's statswhore.pl and xstatswhore.pl, plus aspects from luke_repwalker.pl, and xluke_repwalker.pl. Also included is the histogram code by larryl.

I started playing with the scripts when I noticed that in the early versions jcwren had experienced problems using my HTML::TableExtract module. The later versions of each script instead use the XML ticker and XML::Twig module, an understandable choice given the circumstances. Nevertheless I started investigating what the original problems were with HTML::TableExtract. As it turns out, these problems have since gone away: perlmonks has a different query interface and results format for writeups via HTML, plus there are later versions of HTML::TableExtract that greatly assist in extracting HTML from the tables in question (as opposed to the traditional role of extracting tables from the HTML in question). These developments negate the need for hoop gymnastics and inheritance hell that jcwren had been forced into.

The XML interface is far quicker, but apparently not all people wish to install the associated XML modules and libraries.

This module incorporates both query methods, XML as well as HTML. The default is XML, but this behavior can be changed via the mode parameter.

If you have XML parsing problems with non UTF-8 encodings in your titles, then simply set the mode to HTML.

Behind a proxy server? Set your http_proxy environment variable to the URL of your proxy server.

See the POD for more information. Thanks to jcwren and larryl for the original code.

Basic usage:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use PerlMonks::StatsWhore;
$sw = PerlMonks::StatsWhore->new(
                                 user     => 'username',
                                 password => 'password',
                                );
print $sw->summary_as_string;
[download]

Check out the code if you're interested in inheritance and polymorphism.

Matt

Updates thus far:

• POD fix per Biker's suggestion
• Added $VERSION info. For gawd's sake we might as well attempt to approach the book keeping abilities of CPAN.
• Added reminder of motivation for XML barfing on non "standard" characters (forget Latin-2) in node titles thanks to another nudge from the ever-testing Biker.

A Perl extension to check PM experience points before a given PerlMonk reaches 'level vroom'.   Handy for monks of the Saint(10)ly persuasion.   Works fine as is, but substantial changes are in the works.

You can peruse all the supporting files initially generated by h2xs here, plus there's a tarball of the whole shebang.

(as this is my first serious-to-completion-of-working-code module writing effort, I'd particularly welcome any and all criticism, complaints, rotton fruit, or even constructive suggestions)

A simple little program that will keep a log of any changes to the title, id, or rep of your nodes, including the addition or deletion of said nodes.

2002-03-31 Edit by the node bunny : Changed login and password.

Please read the warnings about possible dangers. Do not simply execute any code/node you have reason to distrust, but that of course goes for manual downloads as well. This does work well for just downloading too though, if you just want to poke around in a script. :)

Update: The provided patch by Amoe has been applied. My way worked for me on Win2k, cygwin and FreeBSD, so I lazied out on this one. :) Thanks Amoe!

Update 2: Suggestion 2 by belg4mit should be working now: Using the -d option for deparsing instead of executing should now work. Note that in-memory-deparsing uses a new feauture (v5.6.1?) in B::Deparse that won't work with older perls. Use together with -M or -F instead.

pm_username|pm_passwd|email_addy

It's that simple (at least I hope it is).

my example is below... please feel free to add your own.

update: Tue Apr 2 10:37:58 2002 GMT ~ changed off trigger due to Petruchio

update: Fri May 24 11:19:30 2002 GMT ~ &quot; as added, so gots to take it out (and also added a \n remove, jeez, i'm gonna make this obsolete soon ~ and &amp; ~ i hope the goods see pmdev wiki soon)

update: Fri Jan 17 05:31:13 2003 GMT -- more changes, more fixes.

The large dropoff over the weekend is tough to miss......

A cool feature about your posts is the fact that you can put HTML comments in the title of your post. Armed with this feature, it is possible to put 'category markers' in your node titles and use a script to find them and make a nice list of your favorite nodes.

The following code will do just that, the demo is on my home node. All you need to do is mark your favorite nodes by hand with something like <!--code--> or <!--obfu-->. Well that's how i did it before i saw jcwren's Bulk Node Title Editor.

The side effect is that you have to link directly to a node's id instead of it's name when referring to it in other posts, chatbox, etc. But that's okay, you use id tags, don't you? Hey Rocko! Ask 'em if they use id tags!

Feel free to send comments and suggestions to crazyinsomniac! :D

UPDATE: - after gleaming good security info from jcwren, i changed this script to accept an interactive password similiar to how mysql asks for passwords: you can specify the password on the command line with the -p option (dangerous for mulit-user boxes), or you can just specify -p by itself and be prompted for the password. I use Term::ReadKey to keep the password 'invisible'.

(telling observation: I have yet to post a node during the 9am-10am slot....)

Update: slight pod tweak for the podmaster
Update2: added second sample output based on a full month of data

Implements automatic updating of home node image, after so many hits on the home node. Uses a "bug" script (included) to detect hits, and this piece to automatically uploaded a new image after so many hits.

Please read the section on SECURITY and the rest of the documentation before using. Requires some responsibility on the part of the user.

Quickly check changes in your Perl Monks nodes' reputations. It will list all of your nodes, sorted by reputation in descending order, with any changes since the last time you ran Quickrep.

It actually is two scripts (well three if you're cronless), cblast35.pl -- which is to be run cron style to update the "database", and cblast35.cgi -- which just displays the messages via CGI.

You can also download everything from my website here

update: A call for cblast35 mirrors has yielded three quite a few mirrors, jay!!!

Mirror list:
• http://crazyinsomniac.perlmonk.org/perl/cblast35/cblast35.cgi
• http://perlmonks.thepen.com/cgi-bin/cblast35.cgi
• http://www.unlocalhost.com/cblast35/cblast35.cgi (403) appears to be down
• http://nbpfaus.net/~pfau/cbhistory.cgi (cbhistory)
• http://209.15.115.34/cgi-bin/perlmonks/cblast35.cgi
• *(temporarily down)*http://198.144.10.226/cgi-bin/cbhistory (thanx diotalevi)
• http://pthbb.org/cb/last.cgi lightweight mirror from belg4mit

hup is a home node updater. You can use it on the command line, or from a crontab, to automate updating your homenode. As always, suggestions welcome.

Updates

• 2001-11-14 -- Added scratchpad support, courtesy of thatguy.
• 2002-01-19 -- Miscellaneous fixes. No longer warns when certain fields are empty; prompts for username and password

xml_pimp.pl - You heard of statswhore? You heard (x)luke_repwalker? Well dis da pimp!

Like always, no comments are welcome(now that's what I call sarcasm ;-))

updates:
July 20, 2001 - minor cosmetic changes;
July 21, 2001 - updated some pod (a blah... got by me)
July 27, 2001 - changed sort keys to sort {$a<=>$b> keys(print_HISTORY for -h1)
September 26, 2001 - added &ticker=yes (details: New ticker login for PM XML clients)
Sun Jan 13 21:11:13 2002 GMT - fixed serious bug nobody told me about, which I was unaware of due to my testing environment. I guess the good thing is i'm the only one using this ;)(or I lost the original posted version which worked)

I frequently update my pmchat script and have found that updating my node for it is quite a pain in the *ss. To simplify the experience, I wrote the following script that is called from my Makefile (when my script changes) and automatically updates its node under Code Catecombs.

This script WILL NOT work for you without modification. I hestitated to post it here in its form, but decided that it was probably worth the educational experience.

Note: the script draws from the cookie file that is created by my pmchat script for authentication.

Also, check out Personal Nodelet Restorer.

Comments and improvements always welcome. :)

Fixes:
thanks to crazyinsomniac PodMaster for pointing out my lack of Win32 support in the synopsis

UPDATE: - after gleaming good security info from jcwren, i changed this script to accept an interactive password similiar to how mysql asks for passwords: you can specify the password on the command line with the -p option (dangerous for mulit-user boxes), or you can just specify -p by itself and be prompted for the password. I use Term::ReadKey to keep the password 'invisible'. Because of the new nature, be sure and specify -p last, after -u and -s if used.

UPDATE (Mar 24,2002): - somebody moved 'lastnode' before 'node' so regex has been updated

Main features:

• Colorized output via ANSI escape sequences
• Compatible with both *nix and Win32 (mostly :)
• Displays most recent New Nodes
• Can launch a browser to view a node
• Check for and autoinstall updates
• An "Away" mode for not being in "Other Users"
• Uses the various XML Generators of PerlMonks
• Tracks XP status
• Tracks Reputation of your nodes (and displays WHICH nodes have changed -- and by how much)
• Requires NO configuration, download and run!
• Displays Other Users
• User configurable options (inside Pmchat) for
  • Time-stamping each message (for long-term running)
  • Turn off/on colorization
  • Number of New Nodes listed
  • Which browser to use for node viewing
  • Update on Launch
  • Seconds between polls for new messages (n/a on Windows)
  • Debugging mode. No output is sent to Perlmonks
  • Log file. Keeps a log of all messages. Set "logfile" to the desired filename. To stop, set "logfile" to "0" or "none".

Because pmchat is a text-mode client, it has the following shortcomings

• Doesn't render HTML tags
• Doesn't render special HTML entities (eg: &amp;)

By default, the file is written to perlmonks.html. If that file already exists, a backup will be created at Operlmonks.html before the file is overwritten.

I guess you need to have the WebFetch module installed to run this.

Special thanks to :
- OeufMayo for creating the XML::Parser tutorial that helped me create this.
- mirod for helping me with the XML::Parser problem.

Bugfixes:
- xml_char () was altered to read in entire string as mirod suggested
- the tests to return () were moved to xml_end () from xml_start () to keep from reading too many strings into one field

Suggestions please ...

Note: Threaded mode can get dramatically slower as the number of nodes increases, so be prepared to wait when threading more than a few days worth (1000+). Be sure the #! and 3 config variables are correct first.

Also: For some reason xNN is now very very slow checking anything more than 1 day of nodes. Nothing changed in the script which suggests that some change in the XML ticker (or something) is causing it. I'm kind of busy now so the fix will have to wait (unless you figure it out and send me a patch :-)

Code updated: 5.23.2002

Hear monks talk! Listen to your favorite monks battle it out in the chatterbox, as streaming audio! Make your co-workers think you're a basket case!

This script delivers the chatterbox as MP3 encoded streaming audio. It uses the festival/MBROLA text-to-speech (TTS) system to create the audio on the fly.

Because it's larger than 50k reputer has two nodes on Perlmonks.
This is the source code node in code catacombs.
Please make replies to the reply node.

• Sort nodes by rep, title or date in HTML tables.
  html screenshot
• Three ways to graph number of nodes by reputation.
  html screenshot
• Display changed, deleted and new node info and rep change.
  html screenshot
• Cookies save info used for lwp transfers, and display options.
  html screenshot
• Can write up to 8 data files in temp dir, so give it write permission.
  html screenshot

Also includes proxy support, restricted public access mode,
integration with command line programs and compressed file export.

• Import/export functions disabled unless Compress::Zlib is installed
  
• Requires XML::Simple
  

Update: Fixed possible problem creating data files when first running script.

d/l the code, and save the two pieces marked with ##filename=foo.html## as what the name is supposed to be. Be sure cookies and JavaScript are on. Then point your browser at perlmonks.html, and try it out.

With this, this morning I was able to walk through every post for several days worth of PerlMonks in just a few hours. Most of that time was spent writing up responses. With this I can follow the whole site with less energy than it would take to hit a reasonable portion of it through using Newest Nodes.

Update
Clearly my cookie handling in JavaScript sucks. Oh well, I don't like either cookies or JavaScript, so I guess that was my internal bias showing. :-) Now fixed.

This is an update of luke_repwalker.pl that uses mirods XML::Twig module. It's faster because it generates few hits to the server. People like tilly should appreciate this... And ultimately it's more reliable, since it doesn't try to parse the tables of article listings.

I posted this as new code so that the old one would still be available. Some people have had trouble installing the various XML modules, or don't wish to.

xstatswhore.pl is an update of statswhore.pl that uses mirods XML::Twig module, and includes larryls histogram code (if you like the histogram part, be sure to thank him. ++Re: statswhore.pl). This version has the advantage of being faster by generating fewer hits to the server, and fixing the problem of having exactly a multiple of 50 nodes. And the histogram part is really cool..

I posted this as new code so that the old one would still be available. Some people have had trouble installing the various XML modules, or don't wish to.

Update: I no longer post the graphs on my home node. The updated code given in the replies to this node is more modern. Thanks to everyone for the kind comments I received when I first wrote this.

Since it's based on ZZamboni's Chatterbox Client you will need to download his module as well.

For the very least that highlighting has to resemble my Vim colorscheme. ;-)

So I wrote the following to read my (custom) color scheme file and create a corresponding CSS to be used with the "jaap" variation Corion supplied.

Disclaimer: This is far from a full-fledged vimscript parser/interpreter. It just reads a color scheme (try "zellner.vim" it should at least work with that) with the diamond operator and only "knows" about the "highlight" command from Vim. I hope it interprets at least this reasonably close to Vim's implementation.

If you actually produce something useful with if you have to host that CSS file somewhere and refer to it instead of the file Corion provided on his own site.

Update: Added some minimal comments.

As you might deduce from the questions in there, I'm not really a vimscript programmer. And I also didn't bother to mock with my vim files to test those. :-(

A lightweight CB Mirror similar to cblast35.

No DB needed at all. Uses the 'modern' xml feed so it can provide properly parsed output.

Set up mini-cb60-fetch.pl on cron job (--sleeptime=0) or as an always running daemon. Set up mini-cb-render.pl as a CGI script for access.

If the CGI parameter 'domain' is provided and is one of 'org','com' or 'net' then that domain will be used for the PM specific links.

This is just a proof of concept for an incremental, low load, PM-parsed CBlast 60.

Update:

• v0.01001: Removed superfluous use of DDS (hangover from initial dev). Added $VERSION to the render code. Trivial changes.
• v0.02: Added cookie support, better defaults. Other minor changes.

Arunbear has kindly made this available online. Many thanks to Arunbear for doing so.
Version 0.02 as posted below is running on http://mini-cb60.datenzoo.de. Thanks to corion for support in getting this set up. The latest version will be available at this site until further notice.

MAILTO=steve@fink.com

#      r----minute
#      |  r-----hour
#      |  |  r------day of the month
#      |  |  |  r------month
#      |  |  |  |  r------day of the week
#      |  |  |  |  |    r------ command to run ---------->
#      |  |  |  |  |    |
       0 10  *  *  *    /home/sfink/bin/whore
       0 18  *  *  *    /home/sfink/bin/whore
[download]

It will also keep a complete historical log of all the changes.

It tells you how many XP you have until your next modular promotion. It also makes change. Here's some sample output.

XP = 16780
16780.00 initiates
839.00 novices, 0 to promotion
335.60 acolytes, 30 to promotion
167.80 scribes, 80 to promotion
83.90 monks, 180 to promotion
33.56 friars, 280 to promotion
16.78 abbots, 780 to promotion
10.49 bishops, 780 to promotion
7.30 pontiffs, 680 to promotion
5.59 saints, 1780 to promotion
5 saints, a bishop, scribe, acolyte, novice, and 10 initiates

********** RESULTS **********
2 time(s): Perl Sensitive Sunglasses
7 time(s): more useful options
9 time(s): Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister
3 time(s): XP is just a number
8 time(s): Welcome to the Monastery
5 time(s): Think about Loose Coupling
3 time(s): P is for Practical
4 time(s): Syntactic Confectionary Delight
4 time(s): Perl Monk, Perl Meditation.
7 time(s): Your skill will accomplish what the force of many cannot
8 time(s): "be consistent."
5 time(s): go ahead... be a heretic
8 time(s): Keep It Simple, Stupid
6 time(s): laziness, impatience, and hubris
4 time(s): Perl: the Markov chain saw
10 time(s): There's more than one way to do things.
3 time(s): Just another Perl shrine
4 time(s): good chemistry is complicated,and a little bit messy-LW

This is a Janitors tool script used to retitle threads. It doesn't work for non-Janitors.

This script replaces Janitors Thread Retitler v1 and Janitors Thread Retitler v2. Unlike previous versions, it requires PerlMonks::Mechanized. This dependancy has facilitated simplifying the code and the adding of "prepare / commit" transactions, allowing Janitors to see all changes before deciding on whether or not to commit them to reality.

Using the -help option on the commandline will give usage details. As before, the -debug option will cause the script to do everything except committing the changes, and /msg'ing the author.

Basic usage is:

Other improvements:

• -from option now functions like a search string instead of a full-title match. -from is now mandatory.
• -to is now a replace string, instead of a full new title.
• -prompt (default) causes an "are you sure" prompt to occur prior to committing changes. -noprompt will suppress this failsafe measure.
• -msg (default) causes a simple notification to be sent to the author of the base node via /msg. -nomsg will suppress notification.
• -ascribe (default) causes simple Janitor attribution at the bottom of the base node. -noascribe (or -noattribute) will suppress Janitor attribution.
• -unconsider (default) will cause the base node to be unconsidered. -nounconsider (or -nou for short) will suppress this feature.
• $ENV{PMUSER} and $ENV{PMPASS} must be set in your environment for login to occur.
• All commandline option names may be abbreviated as one letter (-to = -t, -from = -f, -ascribe = -a). For options such as -ascribe, -prompt, and -msg, their negative abbreviations are -noa, -nop, -nom
• Edit attribution code now appends the following to the end of the base node being retitled: Retitled by [username] from 'old title'.
• Wrapped author name in [ ... ] brackets to fix bug where automated /msg couldn't be sent to folks with whitespace in their username.
• Added a sanity check to prevent automated /msg from being sent to our friend, Anonymous Monk.

Please post questions, additional needs, comments, etc., in this thread so they're all in one place, and so I can respond here. I hope you find this helpful.

Enjoy!

It's Christmas day in LA, and here's my present to the Monastery (whether you see it as a diamond or a lump of coal remains to be determined). Merry Christmas all...

This is Yet Another Attempt to gather Monastery automation tools under one roof. The following is a module, PerlMonks::Mechanized, which mechanizes many of the common PM tasks. It makes using the Monastery's XML tickers a trivial task, for example. I intend to polish it, and add features on request. For now, it just has what I have needed myself recently, plus a little more. But as requests come in, if they're well thought-out, I'll add them. I'm also very interested in comments that will help me to improve it. At this point, I don't consider any part of this module stable (not even its interface). But if people like it, I'll stabilize it, properly document it, and continue adding to it/ maintaining it. For now, this is a rough-draft.

It uses $ENV{PMPASS} and $ENV{PMUSER} for login info, or you can supply them as user, passwd to my $monk = PerlMonks::Mechanize->new($user,$passwd);

Here is a simple example...

use strict;
use warnings;
use PerlMonks::Mechanized;

my $monk = PerlMonks::Mechanized->new();

$monk->say( "Hello.  This is a PerlMonks::Mechanized test." );
[download]

The preceeding code assumes you've set your login env variables. The code only logs you in to the Monastery if the action you're requesting requires a login. Otherwise, you stay logged out. Login is on demand, assuming you've supplied the proper login info. Janitors can also use this for node edits / retitling. I'll be reworking the retitler to take advantage of this module's features.

The code is well commented. Start your reading at the beginning of the PerlMonks::Mechanized package (ie, ignore the Janitor package until you've read PM::Mech first. Then if you're a janitor, go back and read the Janitor class). All public functions are documented at least enough that with the help of Data::Dumper you'll know what they're doing.

Enjoy!

This script has been replaced by Janitors Thread Retitler v3.1.

This script is for use by Janitors. It won't work for you if you're not a Janitor (unless you're a janitor you don't need it).

This is an improved version of Janitors Thread Retitler v1. I have made the following changes and improvements by popular request. I believe I've implemented just about all of the suggestions. Hopefully this will make the script more usable.

• Added a -from command line arg. This arg. is optional. If supplied, it allows you to specify on the command line the original node title. This will bypass the runtime "are you sure?" query, allowing the script to run without interaction.
• Added a sanity check for empty node ID lists.
• Changed the submit click method to expand compatibility to older versions of WWW::Mechanize.
• Removed requirement for WWW::Mechanize 0.74 or newer.
• Added logic to allow subthreads as base targets.
• Improved command line argument names, and allowed abbreviations.
• Added janitor edit attribution in base node. This can be customized or squelched.
• Added help/usage/POD/manpage (aided by Pod::Usage).
• Updated: Added ENV settings for user/passwd, per Corion's suggestion.

Please run the script with the -help option to learn about the improvements to its user interface. Also, please run it once in -debug mode to test it before firing it off live for the first time.

Note that even though its flexibility has been greatly expanded, it may still be used exactly as the original version if you prefer to not learn its new features.

I believe at this point I've addressed the bulk of the suggestions / needs discussed in the thread for the original Janitors Thread Retitler v1. But I'm still open for suggestions on how this might be made more useful.

Update:

Still working on...:

• Implement .ini profile for default janitor attribution text.
• Add -u switch (-unconsider) to automate unconsidering base node.
• Implement tye's regexp approach for title text substitution.
• Allow user/passwd to be read from .ini file if not found in %ENV.
• Implement multiple janitor attribution texts, to be selected by keyword from command line arg. Ex: -attr "old" would pull in the text associated with the keyword 'old' in the INI file. ...this may or may not ever get done. ;)
• Patches welcome!!!

There is a newer version of this code posted at Janitors Thread Retitler v2. Both of these have been replaced by Janitors Thread Retitler v3.1.

This is a new retitler for the Janitors to use in retitling entire threads. It won't work if you're not a janitor, as it requires an edit page only available to the Monastery's cleanup crew. If you're a Janitor, and are tired of manually retitling nodes one by one, and would like an alternative to Janitors' Tools - Bulk node retitler, read on.

Usage is:

To configure for your system you just need to configure the script with your username and password, on or around line 13 and 14, $user and $passwd.

It works by fetching the XML Node Thread ticker for the thread specified by the command-line arg "-id NNNNNN". It walks the thread's XML footprint picking each node ID along the way. It then grabs the original title of the root node, and asks for confirmation before proceeding.

Finally, it uses the editor's view to update the titles for each node id. It leaves "Re:" and "Re^N:" alone, and skips any node whos title is different from the root node's title. That way if someone has intentionally used a different title in a followup it will leave that alone.

In debug mode, this script simply skips the final step where it normally would submit the change.

It requires WWW::Mechanize version 0.74 or newer. The version currently available on ActiveState PPM is 0.72, so if you're an ActiveState user you'll have to upgrade WWW::Mechanize through some other means. The most recent version is 1.05, but anything from 0.74 on is fine.

This was my first dive into using WWW::Mechanize to fill in forms, and it was an educational experience. I'm aware that a similar tool already exists, but I wanted to work through it myself for the practice. My tool uses the XML ticker, which may be less fragile than Corion's bulk-node retitler (no offense to Corion; it was he who pointed out this fact, and the XML ticker wasn't available when he wrote his retitler).

Since it's a learning experience, I welcome any comments or suggestions for improvement.

Janitors, enjoy!

Updated to expand usefulness to older style "Re: Re:" titles too.

Really only useful to the gods, though possibly of interest to all Cabal: This is a quick way to check to see if any of the wikis are needing rotation.

My first time logging into the Monastery with WWW::Mechanize as myself (instead of just scraping anonymously), and my first time fetching Monastery pages via the xml displaytype. More straightforward than I expected. XML++.

I hope it comes in handy.

This program is intended to be used as a procmail filter. It accepts e-mail from the internet, finds the SprintPCS Picture Share and uploads the first picture it finds as your monkpic. The program requires a small amount configuration - you must add a line after the __DATA__ marker to indicate the e-mail address to expect messages from and then your username and password. This is designed to allow multiple users to be served by the same script so if you can't run this locally I can be a gateway for you. Send me a message if you're interested.

The image fetching portion of the code is separated from the image uploading portion so someone could rewrite it for the other services as well.

# Add to your .procmailrc

PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail
INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/rc.picturemail

# Add to your .procmail/rc.picturemail

:0:
* pcs2pm@grenekatz.org
|/home/josh/bin/pmail

Requires java 1.4.x and is easily installable via Java Web Start.

This fetches the front page, does a quick guess at which nodes are questions and produces a histogram of the dates and how many nodes there are from each. I use it to check when the page is getting old and people aren't front-paging enough.

It'd be nicer if someone else were to package this into a CGI (remember to use a cache) and give us all a link. Or better yet... have to auto /msg people or tell the CB or something.

This is "pmnodecomp-blockquoter", and if you can say that 5 times and still chew salt-water taffy afterwards you get a prize. It's a helper for working in a Xterm shell and composing node text for posts here on Perlmonks. If you are replying to an existing node and wish to cite a brief part of what a previous poster has written, you may like to do so using a style that embraces the quote text in <blockquote> tags. This makes it visually stand out as being text attributable to another poster than yourself.

A cryptographically signed copy of the latest release of the program may also be obtained at the site:
here.

---

Update:

Now does what theorbtwo's reply and bart's reply wanted it to do. Also fixed a few other flaws. We now have a plugin-ready script that users can invent their own transmutations for.

Also the example shown below ought to be something like this instead (but see later at Second Update for an even better plan):

Then I switch to a text term (Xterm) and type:

$ pmnodecomp-blockquote <<'NOPOL8N'

which waits for me to paste the X cutbuffer / clipboard selection at the prompt.

• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
• INTERFACE
• %pm_nodetype
• &pm_url
• &pm_ticker
• &pm_login
• &pm_time2unix
• BUGS
• AUTHOR
• LICENSE

NAME

PerlMonksFacts - codified knowledge about the automation interfaces of PerlMonks.org

SYNOPSIS

 use PerlMonksFacts;
 use URI;

 my $uri = URI->new(pm_url);
 $uri->query_form(pm_ticker xp => 'Aristotle');
 print $uri->as_string, "\n";

DESCRIPTION

This module abstracts working with the PerlMonks.org automation interfaces. The main purpose is to put PerlMonks.org ticker URL generation in a blackbox. As such, the main point of the module is the pm_ticker function.

Since this module is intended to be as abstract as possible, the pm_ticker and pm_url functions return raw key/value pairs. Their actual use is up to you; see the SYNOPSIS for an example of building a URI suitable for use in a HTTP GET request from them.

INTERFACE

%pm_nodetype

This hash contains a mapping of PerlMonks.org-internal node type names to human readable versions. It is mostly cribbed from the code of the live Super Search page of PerlMonks.org.

&pm_ticker

This function takes the name of a ticker and possibly parameters for it and returns a list of key/value pairs for URL construction. The following ticker names are recognized:

nn, newest nodes xml generator

Takes one parameter - a perlfunc/time style timestamp.

xp, XP xml ticker

Optionally takes one parameter - a user name or user homenode ID for whose XP should be tracked.

cb, chatterbox xml ticker

No parameters.

msg, private message xml ticker

No parameters.

users, other users xml ticker

No parameters.

query, node query xml generator

Takes any number of parameters, which should be node IDs for the nodes to query.

usernodes, user nodes info xml generator

Takes one parameter: the user whose nodes are to be returned.

thread, xml node thread

No parameters.

&pm_login

This function takes a username and password as parameters and returns a list of key/value pairs for URL construction.

&pm_time2unix

This function takes a timestamp in the format used in PerlMonks-generated XML and returns a perlfunc/time style timestamp.

BUGS

&pm_ticker does not yet implement the types parameter nor the days parameter to the newest nodes ticker.

AUTHOR

Aristotle Pagaltzis pagaltzis@gmx.de

LICENSE

This software is in the public domain. It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

From time to time, a janitor has to clean up a thread where the original poster chose a bad title for his question. If the janitor is too late, there are many nodes to retitle. This WWW::Mechanize script automates this process.

Of course, this script will only work, if you are a janitor, and it will break horribly if the PerlMonks HTML changes enough.

Update: castaway noted that the retitler broke due to recent changes in how internal links are done. The current version fixes that.

Note: This is fairly similar in idea to OeufMayo's drawmap.pl, but it's a different approach. I don't think that it suffers from the "negative zero" bug that jcwren's code did (and perhaps still does)

I'm sat in an office with no external windows and spookily flat lighting. I decided to run xearth to give me some idea of the sun's position. Like a good geek, I put my location into the xearth markerfile, and carried on with my day.

A little while later, remembering the location tags that monks can put on their homenodes (documented here ), I thought it might be interesting to put some other monks on the map. Besides, it seemed like a good opportunity to use LWP::Simple and XML::Simple.

Caveats: The code's a dirty hack:

• This code doesn't use HTML parsing modules to extract the HTML comment containing the location information. It splits based on newlines, and then uses a few regexen to extract the information. This is one of many Wrong Ways to do it, but I'm not really trying to parse, just extract one bit of info.
• It uses Text::Table to output the text in a pretty-printed text table. You could change easily if you don't have this module.

Usage: Put your desired monks in the @monks array, then run the code. You probably want to append the output to your xearth markerfile. Note that this should also work for xplanet, the much prettier xearth alternative.

Fixed broken '/strong' tag - dvergin 2003-03-18

The HTML::Entities module is used in the final step to decode the entities in the node content. More work could be done here like linking PM shortcuts ([id://], [cpan://], etc.), but since we already have a functioning print mode for nodes, why bother? :) This is simply here as a reference for further exploration. (it doesn't even work well on this type of node - Code Catecombs).

UPDATE: added a default node per PodMaster's request.

Like cblast35, keeps a history of messages that go through the chatterbox. This one uses a database (postgresql) to store the messages instead of a DB file. It keeps the last hour's worth of messages.

Try it at http://nbpfaus.net/~pfau/cbhistory.cgi.

The large dropoff over the weekend is tough to miss......

(telling observation: I have yet to post a node during the 9am-10am slot....)

Update: slight pod tweak for the podmaster
Update2: added second sample output based on a full month of data

It actually is two scripts (well three if you're cronless), cblast35.pl -- which is to be run cron style to update the "database", and cblast35.cgi -- which just displays the messages via CGI.

You can also download everything from my website here

update: A call for cblast35 mirrors has yielded three quite a few mirrors, jay!!!

Mirror list:
• http://crazyinsomniac.perlmonk.org/perl/cblast35/cblast35.cgi
• http://perlmonks.thepen.com/cgi-bin/cblast35.cgi
• http://www.unlocalhost.com/cblast35/cblast35.cgi (403) appears to be down
• http://nbpfaus.net/~pfau/cbhistory.cgi (cbhistory)
• http://209.15.115.34/cgi-bin/perlmonks/cblast35.cgi
• *(temporarily down)*http://198.144.10.226/cgi-bin/cbhistory (thanx diotalevi)
• http://pthbb.org/cb/last.cgi lightweight mirror from belg4mit

A little while back in the CB, someone (forgive me, I have forgotten who), mentioned it would be interesting to see the age distribution of those monks who have reported their ages for the PerlMonks Stats Pages. So I decided to take a stab at generating such stats.

The script currently pulls up the upcoming birthdays page and scrapes the age information out, then outputs the requested file format (HTML or PNG). A future version might pull XML data from the server instead when it is available.

Examples: HTML Output, Summary Graph, Detail Graph.

Update: T'was dada that proposed the age stats in the CB. Thanks for the reminder ;)
Changed PDF to PNG in the comments.

Update: Ack! Looks like ar0n beat me to this almost a whole year ago: hup - home node updater. Thanks for pointing this out ybiC, and don't blame me - blame ar0n! :D

Three Scripts for the Acolytes under the sky,
seven for the Friar-lords in their halls of stone,
nine for Mortal Bishops doomed to die,
one for the Dark Saint on his dark throne
in the Land of Monkwhore where the Black Stats lie.
One Mod to rule them all,
one Mod to find them,
one Mod to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them
in the Land of Monkwhore where the Black Stats lie.

A module that encapsulates behavior and code from jcwren's statswhore.pl and xstatswhore.pl, plus aspects from luke_repwalker.pl, and xluke_repwalker.pl. Also included is the histogram code by larryl.

I started playing with the scripts when I noticed that in the early versions jcwren had experienced problems using my HTML::TableExtract module. The later versions of each script instead use the XML ticker and XML::Twig module, an understandable choice given the circumstances. Nevertheless I started investigating what the original problems were with HTML::TableExtract. As it turns out, these problems have since gone away: perlmonks has a different query interface and results format for writeups via HTML, plus there are later versions of HTML::TableExtract that greatly assist in extracting HTML from the tables in question (as opposed to the traditional role of extracting tables from the HTML in question). These developments negate the need for hoop gymnastics and inheritance hell that jcwren had been forced into.

The XML interface is far quicker, but apparently not all people wish to install the associated XML modules and libraries.

This module incorporates both query methods, XML as well as HTML. The default is XML, but this behavior can be changed via the mode parameter.

If you have XML parsing problems with non UTF-8 encodings in your titles, then simply set the mode to HTML.

Behind a proxy server? Set your http_proxy environment variable to the URL of your proxy server.

See the POD for more information. Thanks to jcwren and larryl for the original code.

Basic usage:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use PerlMonks::StatsWhore;
$sw = PerlMonks::StatsWhore->new(
                                 user     => 'username',
                                 password => 'password',
                                );
print $sw->summary_as_string;
[download]

Check out the code if you're interested in inheritance and polymorphism.

Matt

Updates thus far:

• POD fix per Biker's suggestion
• Added $VERSION info. For gawd's sake we might as well attempt to approach the book keeping abilities of CPAN.
• Added reminder of motivation for XML barfing on non "standard" characters (forget Latin-2) in node titles thanks to another nudge from the ever-testing Biker.

A Perl extension to check PM experience points before a given PerlMonk reaches 'level vroom'.   Handy for monks of the Saint(10)ly persuasion.   Works fine as is, but substantial changes are in the works.

You can peruse all the supporting files initially generated by h2xs here, plus there's a tarball of the whole shebang.

(as this is my first serious-to-completion-of-working-code module writing effort, I'd particularly welcome any and all criticism, complaints, rotton fruit, or even constructive suggestions)

A simple little program that will keep a log of any changes to the title, id, or rep of your nodes, including the addition or deletion of said nodes.

2002-03-31 Edit by the node bunny : Changed login and password.

Please read the warnings about possible dangers. Do not simply execute any code/node you have reason to distrust, but that of course goes for manual downloads as well. This does work well for just downloading too though, if you just want to poke around in a script. :)

Update: The provided patch by Amoe has been applied. My way worked for me on Win2k, cygwin and FreeBSD, so I lazied out on this one. :) Thanks Amoe!

Update 2: Suggestion 2 by belg4mit should be working now: Using the -d option for deparsing instead of executing should now work. Note that in-memory-deparsing uses a new feauture (v5.6.1?) in B::Deparse that won't work with older perls. Use together with -M or -F instead.

pm_username|pm_passwd|email_addy

It's that simple (at least I hope it is).

my example is below... please feel free to add your own.

update: Tue Apr 2 10:37:58 2002 GMT ~ changed off trigger due to Petruchio

update: Fri May 24 11:19:30 2002 GMT ~ &quot; as added, so gots to take it out (and also added a \n remove, jeez, i'm gonna make this obsolete soon ~ and &amp; ~ i hope the goods see pmdev wiki soon)

update: Fri Jan 17 05:31:13 2003 GMT -- more changes, more fixes.

A cool feature about your posts is the fact that you can put HTML comments in the title of your post. Armed with this feature, it is possible to put 'category markers' in your node titles and use a script to find them and make a nice list of your favorite nodes.

The following code will do just that, the demo is on my home node. All you need to do is mark your favorite nodes by hand with something like <!--code--> or <!--obfu-->. Well that's how i did it before i saw jcwren's Bulk Node Title Editor.

The side effect is that you have to link directly to a node's id instead of it's name when referring to it in other posts, chatbox, etc. But that's okay, you use id tags, don't you? Hey Rocko! Ask 'em if they use id tags!

Feel free to send comments and suggestions to crazyinsomniac! :D

UPDATE: - after gleaming good security info from jcwren, i changed this script to accept an interactive password similiar to how mysql asks for passwords: you can specify the password on the command line with the -p option (dangerous for mulit-user boxes), or you can just specify -p by itself and be prompted for the password. I use Term::ReadKey to keep the password 'invisible'.

Implements automatic updating of home node image, after so many hits on the home node. Uses a "bug" script (included) to detect hits, and this piece to automatically uploaded a new image after so many hits.

Please read the section on SECURITY and the rest of the documentation before using. Requires some responsibility on the part of the user.

Quickly check changes in your Perl Monks nodes' reputations. It will list all of your nodes, sorted by reputation in descending order, with any changes since the last time you ran Quickrep.

hup is a home node updater. You can use it on the command line, or from a crontab, to automate updating your homenode. As always, suggestions welcome.

Updates

• 2001-11-14 -- Added scratchpad support, courtesy of thatguy.
• 2002-01-19 -- Miscellaneous fixes. No longer warns when certain fields are empty; prompts for username and password

xml_pimp.pl - You heard of statswhore? You heard (x)luke_repwalker? Well dis da pimp!

Like always, no comments are welcome(now that's what I call sarcasm ;-))

updates:
July 20, 2001 - minor cosmetic changes;
July 21, 2001 - updated some pod (a blah... got by me)
July 27, 2001 - changed sort keys to sort {$a<=>$b> keys(print_HISTORY for -h1)
September 26, 2001 - added &ticker=yes (details: New ticker login for PM XML clients)
Sun Jan 13 21:11:13 2002 GMT - fixed serious bug nobody told me about, which I was unaware of due to my testing environment. I guess the good thing is i'm the only one using this ;)(or I lost the original posted version which worked)

I frequently update my pmchat script and have found that updating my node for it is quite a pain in the *ss. To simplify the experience, I wrote the following script that is called from my Makefile (when my script changes) and automatically updates its node under Code Catecombs.

This script WILL NOT work for you without modification. I hestitated to post it here in its form, but decided that it was probably worth the educational experience.

Note: the script draws from the cookie file that is created by my pmchat script for authentication.

Also, check out Personal Nodelet Restorer.

Comments and improvements always welcome. :)

Fixes:
thanks to crazyinsomniac PodMaster for pointing out my lack of Win32 support in the synopsis

UPDATE: - after gleaming good security info from jcwren, i changed this script to accept an interactive password similiar to how mysql asks for passwords: you can specify the password on the command line with the -p option (dangerous for mulit-user boxes), or you can just specify -p by itself and be prompted for the password. I use Term::ReadKey to keep the password 'invisible'. Because of the new nature, be sure and specify -p last, after -u and -s if used.

UPDATE (Mar 24,2002): - somebody moved 'lastnode' before 'node' so regex has been updated

Main features:

• Colorized output via ANSI escape sequences
• Compatible with both *nix and Win32 (mostly :)
• Displays most recent New Nodes
• Can launch a browser to view a node
• Check for and autoinstall updates
• An "Away" mode for not being in "Other Users"
• Uses the various XML Generators of PerlMonks
• Tracks XP status
• Tracks Reputation of your nodes (and displays WHICH nodes have changed -- and by how much)
• Requires NO configuration, download and run!
• Displays Other Users
• User configurable options (inside Pmchat) for
  • Time-stamping each message (for long-term running)
  • Turn off/on colorization
  • Number of New Nodes listed
  • Which browser to use for node viewing
  • Update on Launch
  • Seconds between polls for new messages (n/a on Windows)
  • Debugging mode. No output is sent to Perlmonks
  • Log file. Keeps a log of all messages. Set "logfile" to the desired filename. To stop, set "logfile" to "0" or "none".

Because pmchat is a text-mode client, it has the following shortcomings

• Doesn't render HTML tags
• Doesn't render special HTML entities (eg: &amp;)

By default, the file is written to perlmonks.html. If that file already exists, a backup will be created at Operlmonks.html before the file is overwritten.

I guess you need to have the WebFetch module installed to run this.

Special thanks to :
- OeufMayo for creating the XML::Parser tutorial that helped me create this.
- mirod for helping me with the XML::Parser problem.

Bugfixes:
- xml_char () was altered to read in entire string as mirod suggested
- the tests to return () were moved to xml_end () from xml_start () to keep from reading too many strings into one field

Suggestions please ...

The code is too large to post it here, so I'll point you to the web page instead.

There are a number of clients that use these modules. Check out my home node for the full list.

Enjoy!

Note: Threaded mode can get dramatically slower as the number of nodes increases, so be prepared to wait when threading more than a few days worth (1000+). Be sure the #! and 3 config variables are correct first.

Also: For some reason xNN is now very very slow checking anything more than 1 day of nodes. Nothing changed in the script which suggests that some change in the XML ticker (or something) is causing it. I'm kind of busy now so the fix will have to wait (unless you figure it out and send me a patch :-)

Code updated: 5.23.2002

Because it's larger than 50k reputer has two nodes on Perlmonks.
This is the source code node in code catacombs.
Please make replies to the reply node.

• Sort nodes by rep, title or date in HTML tables.
  html screenshot
• Three ways to graph number of nodes by reputation.
  html screenshot
• Display changed, deleted and new node info and rep change.
  html screenshot
• Cookies save info used for lwp transfers, and display options.
  html screenshot
• Can write up to 8 data files in temp dir, so give it write permission.
  html screenshot

Also includes proxy support, restricted public access mode,
integration with command line programs and compressed file export.

• Import/export functions disabled unless Compress::Zlib is installed
  
• Requires XML::Simple
  

Update: Fixed possible problem creating data files when first running script.

This is an update of luke_repwalker.pl that uses mirods XML::Twig module. It's faster because it generates few hits to the server. People like tilly should appreciate this... And ultimately it's more reliable, since it doesn't try to parse the tables of article listings.

I posted this as new code so that the old one would still be available. Some people have had trouble installing the various XML modules, or don't wish to.

xstatswhore.pl is an update of statswhore.pl that uses mirods XML::Twig module, and includes larryls histogram code (if you like the histogram part, be sure to thank him. ++Re: statswhore.pl). This version has the advantage of being faster by generating fewer hits to the server, and fixing the problem of having exactly a multiple of 50 nodes. And the histogram part is really cool..

I posted this as new code so that the old one would still be available. Some people have had trouble installing the various XML modules, or don't wish to.

To use just fill in the configuration variables (first!) and call it from your local web server.

functions include:

- emulates perlmonks chatterbox linking standards
- integrated message inbox with cc to self option
- new nodes ticker
- rep change ticker with history
- extract and display $NORM
- textarea input for editing extended messages
- large messages chunked for multiple send
- super search form with perldoc, cpan, google and babelfish
- launchpad for accessing your favorite search engines

Run it and select help for more info.

WARNING: Client authentication makes framechat more secure but exercise caution. Do not allow public access to your installation of framechat!

New in 2.0

• New nodes ticker!
• Rep change ticker with history!
• Client login & quit for better security.
• Create & edit optional external config file.
• Tools control panel to see & set parameters.
• /ignore and /unignore and see who's being ignored.
• /logout and /login implemented.
  • Not in the userlist but still see chat.
  • All links to perlmonks become logged out.
  • History still functions if enabled.
  • Logout disables node title lookup.

  Improved:
  

• Faster thanks to less print statements.
• More robust error handling (esp. xml parsing).
• XP nodelet now shows xp gain and loss messages (Ack!)
• inbox/launchpad/newnode frame can remember state.
• Notes added to update notification.

  Fixed in 2.0:
  

• Bug in link parser that caused italic history after an unclosed i tag.
• Last \$norm should now appear when code updated.
• Code is less redundant and more readable.

  Fixed in 2.01:
  

• A new node with 0 rep showed +0 change (a printf feature).
• New nodes and check update didn't work if proxy in use.
• New nodes loadtime was 1 second off.

  Fixed in 2.02:
  

• Empty document error if history file for present day didn't exist.
• IIS breakage addressed with a new config var: $broken.
• Change to talk frame enables submit with Tab+Enter sequence (thanks grinder).
• <i> tags would italicize cb text, oops.
• Rep related data files now 50% smaller.
• Added config file syntax status feedback and warnings.
• Improved the help and tools sections.
• NEW: Node rep history graph!

  Fixed in 2.03:
  

• control chrs in chat xml not being stripped due to missing /d modifier on tr in sub fixxml.
• client authentication erroneously succeeded if username and password not defined.

  Fixed in 2.04:
  

• Repaired the chat frame and norm parser to conform with changes at perlmonks.
• Added support for the latest shortcut tags: pad, kobe, jargon, perldoc. If you use an external config file these need to be added to the @tags array so they appear in the pulldown menu in the input frame, as well as a few items added to the %launch_urls hash.

To run framechat under mod_perl use OeufMayo's mod_perl patch.

d/l the code, and save the two pieces marked with ##filename=foo.html## as what the name is supposed to be. Be sure cookies and JavaScript are on. Then point your browser at perlmonks.html, and try it out.

With this, this morning I was able to walk through every post for several days worth of PerlMonks in just a few hours. Most of that time was spent writing up responses. With this I can follow the whole site with less energy than it would take to hit a reasonable portion of it through using Newest Nodes.

Update
Clearly my cookie handling in JavaScript sucks. Oh well, I don't like either cookies or JavaScript, so I guess that was my internal bias showing. :-) Now fixed.

Hear monks talk! Listen to your favorite monks battle it out in the chatterbox, as streaming audio! Make your co-workers think you're a basket case!

This script delivers the chatterbox as MP3 encoded streaming audio. It uses the festival/MBROLA text-to-speech (TTS) system to create the audio on the fly.

Since it's based on ZZamboni's Chatterbox Client you will need to download his module as well.

This program gets your personal messages from PerlMonks and displays or mails them to you. It can optionally check them off automatically. Typical use would be in a crontab entry like this:

0 * * * * $HOME/bin/pmpager.pl -m your@address.com
[download]

This program is also part of the PerlMonksChat distribution.

Update: I no longer post the graphs on my home node. The updated code given in the replies to this node is more modern. Thanks to everyone for the kind comments I received when I first wrote this.