What is this

Rss-actor downloads an RSS channel and acts upon the new (unseen) entries. It can be used e.g. to download content.

Usage

rss-actor.pl [-d|-debug] [-is|-ignoreseen] [-ne|-noexec] channel.yml

ARGUMENTS

• -d, -debug : print debugging information. Primarily for development.
• -is, -ignoreseen : Ignore that an item was already seen, run the actions as it it wasn't seen before.
• -ne, -noexec : Do not execute actions that would execute commands. For troubleshooting.

Configuration file format

Top level keys

• channel: The URL of the RSS channel
• id: identifier of the channel, used e.g. to generate the "seen" file
• vars: list of global variables (see "Variables" below)
• match: list of patterns to look for in the RSS data, and actions to be executed on the matches. (see "Matches" below).

Matches

A "match" is basically what to look for in an RSS item, and what to do if it is found.

Keys:

• dpath: the dpath of the field in the item to check.
• regexp: the regexp to match the field to consider it an item to act upon.
• noregexp: the regexp to match the field to ignore it from being acted upon.
• vars: variables local to the match. See "Variables" below.
• do: list of actions to perform on a match. See "Actions" below.

Actions

What to do with a match.

Print

Prints a string.

• action: print
• print: text to print

Exec

Executes a command.

• action: exec
• cmd: command to execute.

Dump

Dumps the actual item (using Perl Dumper module)

• action: dump

Variables

Variables can be either contain literal values or values extracted from the RSS data.

Fields of a variable definition:

• name: the name of the variable
• value: the value of the variable
• dpath: the dpath where the value is to be extracted from. Dpath is very similar to xpath, handled by the Data::DPath Perl module.

Either the 'value' or the 'dpath' field has to be used.

Variable substitition

Variable values can be substituted as %name%.

Example configuration

# Where to download the rss from
channel: http://showrss.info/rss.php?user_id=9876543210&hd=1&proper=1
# The local id of this channel. It is used to generate the name of the "seen" file.
id: showrss
# variables that can be referred to later.
vars:
    - name: cmd
      value: /usr/bin/transmission-remote
    - name: mailto
      value: my@mail.address
    - name: downloaddir
      value: /data/downloads
    - name: mailbody
      value: |
        From: RSS-Actor
        Subject: Queued "%title%" for download

        Queued "%title%".
match:
# The dpath of the variable we want to check
    - dpath: /title
# What to look in the title. More filtering is possible here too.
      regexp: '.'
# Other variables that can be used
      vars:
          - name: url
            dpath: /enclosure/url
          - name: title
            dpath: /title
# What to do if we have an unseen item
      do:
# We just print this to the terminal
         - action: print
           print: "Downloading %title% (%url%)\n"
# Queue it for download
         - action: exec
           cmd: [ "%cmd%", "-w", "%downloaddir%", "-a",  "%url%" ]
# Send a mail about it
         - action: exec
           cmd: "/bin/echo '%mailbody%' | /usr/sbin/dma %mailto%"
# This is to help figuring out which value is where
#    - var: /title
#      regexp: '.'
#      do:
#        - action: dump

Dependencies

The following perl libraries are needed:

• TODO

Author

István Szekeres szekeres@iii.hu