NAME Babble - RSS Feed Aggregator and Blog engine SYNOPSIS use Babble; use Babble::DataSource::RSS; my $babble = Babble->new (); $babble->add_params (meta_title => "Example Babble"); $babble->add_sources ( Babble::DataSource::RSS->new ( -id => "Gergely Nagy", -location => 'http://bonehunter.rulez.org/~algernon/blog/index.xml', -lwp => { agent => "Babble/" . $Babble::VERSION . " (Example)" } ) ); $babble->collect_feeds (); print $babble->output (-theme => "sidebar"); DESCRIPTION "Babble" is a system to collect, process and display RSS feeds. Designed in a straightforward and extensible manner, "Babble" provides near unlimited flexibility. Even though it provides lots of functionality, the basic usage is pretty simple, and only a few lines. However, would one want to add new feed item processor functions, that is. also trivial to accomplish. METHODS "Babble" has a handful of methods, all of them will be enumerated here. *new*() Creates a new Babble object. Arguments to the *new* method are listed below, all of them are optional. All arguments passed to *new* will be stored without parsing, for later use by processors and other extensions. -processors An array of subroutines that Babble will run for each and every item it processes. See the PROCESSORS section for more information about these matters. -limit_max The maximum number of items in the collection. This will be used by the top-level Babble::Document::Collection object, see the documentation of that class for further details. -callbacks_collect_start An array of subroutines that Babble will run for each and every datasource when collecting feeds. The routine must take only one argument: a reference to a Babble::DataSource object. Calling happens before the collect itself starts. -callbacks_collect_end An array of subroutines that Babble will run for each and every datasource when collecting feeds. The routine must take only one argument: a reference to a Babble::DataSource object. Calling happens after the collect itself ended. *add_params*(%params) Add custom paramaters to the Babble object, which might be usable for the output generation routines. See the documentation of the relevant output method for details. *add_sources*(@sources) Adds multiple sources in one go. *collect_feeds*() Retrieve and process the feeds that were added to the Babble. All processor routines will be run by this very method. Also, if there were any collect callbacks specified when the object was created, they will be run too. Please note that this must be called before the *output* method! sort([$params]) Sort all the elements in an aggregation by date, and return the sorted array of items. Leaves the work to Babble::Document::Collection->sort(). all([$params]) Return all items in an aggregation as an array. output(%params) Generate the output. This methods recognises two arguments: "type", which determines what output method will be used for the actual output itself, and "theme", which overrides this, and uses a theme engine instead. (A theme engine is simply a wrapper around a specific output method, with some paramaters pre-filled.) The called module needs to be named "Babble::Output::$type" or "Babble::Theme::$theme", and must be a Babble::Output descendant. search() Dispatch everything to Babble::Document::Collection->search(). PROCESSORS Processors are subroutines that take four arguments: An *item*, a *channel*, a *source*, and a "Babble" object (the caller). All of them are references. An *item* is a Babble::Document object, *channel* is a Babble::Document::Collection object, and *source* is a Babble::DataSource object. Preprocessors operate on *item* in-place, doing whatever they want with it, being it adding new fields, modifying others or anything one might come up with. A default set of preprocessors, which are always run first (unless special hackery is in the works), are provided in the "Babble::Processors" module. Since they are automatically used, one does not need to add them explicitly. AUTHOR Gergely Nagy, algernon@bonehunter.rulez.org Bugs should be reported at . SEE ALSO Babble::DataSource, Babble::Document, Babble::Document::Collection, Babble::Output, Babble::Theme, Babble::Processors