SYNOPSIS

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{'item'}}) {
print " --- Item ---\n",
" Title: $item->{'title'}\n",
" Desc: $item->{'description'}\n",
" Link: $item->{'link'}\n\n";
}

DESCRIPTION

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

Remove leading whitespace from URIs

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)

$inScalarRef is a reference to a scalar containing the document to be parsed, the contents will effectively be destroyed. $outHashRef is a reference to the hash within which to store the parsed content.

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.

AUTHOR

Jerrad Pierce <[email protected]>.

Scott Thomason <[email protected]>

LICENSE

Portions Copyright (c) 2002,2003,2009 Jerrad Pierce, (c) 2000 Scott Thomason. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.