=( About Backend News Project)=
Please note that this project is no longer in active development. This project was started in the year 2000
when RSS, RDF and feeds were not common. Hence at that time there was rarely any tools available to support
the parsing of these feeds. However, due to the recent interest in blogs and use of RSS by blogs, a lot of
more capable and powerful parsers have come into the picture.
Hence this project is going into its natural death. I will keep these pages and file here just in case someone has
a flash of brilliance and wants to use them for some radically new project or if they want to use bits and pieces of
codes from the projects.
- Srijith
(6th November 2003)
This project aims to build a group of Perl[?] modulesthat can be
used extract backend news files
from different web sites that offer them and display these news in personal website that has the
ability to run Perl CGI scripts. The idea started as a personal hobby to write these scripts, for each
server news seperately.
It was noticed that writing individual scripts was creating a lot of reduntant functions. That combined with
my personal desire to do Perl module programming set me in this direction.
As of version 1.0.31, NewsGrabber module has the ability to grab and display
news from 31 websites:
Slashdot.org
Freshmeat.net
Geeknews.net
Linux-2000.org
Twlc.net
Cmptr.com
Segfault.org
Icewalkers.com
Mozilla.org
Hotwired.com
Linux.com
Linuxapps.com
Lwn.net
Arstechnica.com
Cert.org
Hackinthebox.org
Betanews.com
Techtronic.com
Packetstormsecurity.org
Bsdtoday.com
Newsforge.net
Dotcomma.org
Kuro5hin.org
Fileforum.betanews.com
Salon.com
Moreover.com (general support for all RSS feeds.. there are more than 300 feeds)
Dotcomscoop.Com
Theregister.co.uk
Techdirt.com
Plastic.com
Linuxtoday.com
To get NewsGrabber to work, you will need
- A web server with perl installed and ability to run CGI scripts.
- LWP Perl module
- XML::Parser module.(Required for Version Beta1.1.25 and higher. Lower
versions works without this module)
- Patience !
The first stable version (Version 1.0.30) of the codes was put online on 2nd March 2002, after being
in beta stage for more than a year. Presently it is in Stable version 1.0.31. Speaking of
versions, this project follows a bit of a different version numbering system due to its peculiar nature.
More on version numbering can be found here.
While the module work was in progress, some ethical and copyright issues had cropped up. Details of these can be
found here. People who want to contribute or extend this work on their own may want to go
through this section. It might save you some trouble.
Finally, before you go off and start using the module, it will be
great if you guys send me an email so that I can track how
many people are actually using NewsGrabber and maybe make a list of all
the users!
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