XML::RSSLite(3pm)

Usage

  use XML::RSSLite;
  parseRSS(\%result, \$content);
  print "=== Channel ===\n",
        "Title: $result{'title'}\n",
        "Desc:  $result{'description'}\n",
        "Link:  $result{'link'}\n\n";
  foreach $item (@{$result{'items'}}) {
  print "  --- Item ---\n",
        "  Title: $item->{'title'}\n",
        "  Desc:  $item->{'description'}\n",
        "  Link:  $item->{'link'}\n\n";
  }

Overview

This module attempts to extract the maximum amount of content from available documents, and is less concerned with XML compliance than alternatives. Rather than rely on XML::Parser, it uses heuristics and good old-fashioned Perl regular expressions. It stores the data in a simple hash structure, and "aliases" certain tags so that when done, you can count on having the minimal data necessary for re-constructing a valid RSS file. This means you get the basic title, description, and link for a channel and its items.

This module extracts more usable links by parsing "scriptingNews" and "weblog" formats in addition to RDF & RSS. It also "sanitizes" the output for best results. The munging includes:

Remove html tags to leave plain text

Remove leading whitespace from URIs

By defaul strips characters except 0-9~!@#$%^&*()-+=a-zA-Z[];',.:"<>?\s

Use <url> tags when <link> is empty

Use misplaced urls in <title> when <link> is empty

Exract links from <a href=...> if required

Limit links to ftp and http(s)

Join relative item urls (beginning with / or #) to the site base

Export

parseRSS($outHashRef, $inScalarRef, [$strip])

inScalarRef - required: Reference to a scalar containing the document to be parsed. NOTE: The contents will effectively be destroyed. Make a deep copy first if you care.

outHashRef - required: Reference to the hash within which to store the parsed content.

strip - optional

An expression indicating the level of winnowing to be performed on the characters permitted in the results.

1 strip non-printable characters

0 no characters are removed

undefined (Default) strip everything but:: 0-9~!@#$%^&*()-+= a-zA-Z[];',.:"<>?\t\n

Exportable

parseXML(\%parsedTree, \$parseThis, 'topTag', $comments);

parsedTree - required: Reference to hash to store the parsed document within.

parseThis - required: Reference to scalar containing the document to parse.

topTag - optional: Tag to consider the root node, leaving this undefined is not recommended.

comments - optional

false will remove contents from parseThis

true will not remove comments from parseThis

array reference is true, comments are stored here

Caveats

This is not a conforming parser. It does not handle the following

•: <foo bar=">">

•: <foo><bar> <bar></bar> <bar></bar> </bar></foo>

•: <![CDATA[ ]]>

•: PI

It's non-validating, without a DTD the following cannot be properly addressed

entities

namespaces: This may or may not be arriving in some future release.

Pod errors

Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:

Around line 480:: =back without =over

Releases

10 releases since Debian 4.0 (Etch); the text changed 6 times.