[MacPerl] Using XML::RSS as a BBEdit Perl Filter

[Brian McNett <webmaster@mycoinfo.com>]

Okay, as usual, I begin with my normal daftness disclaimer.  My 
abnormally broad blind-spot prevents me from seeing the solution even 
after reading the documentation.

I'm working on adding RSS (that's Netscape's Rich Site Summary) to my 
site.  There's a nice online tutorial:

http://www.webreference.com/perl/tutorial/8/

And the scripts there work (after a fashion) as MacPerl droplets without 
modification.

However, I spend my entire day inside BBEdit, and shifting back to the 
finder just to parse a single file doesn't cut it.

Now, the script that creates the RSS file works like a charm as a BBEdit 
Perl Filter.  Just comment out the line which saves the file, and drop 
the resulting script into the "Perl Filters" folder.

However, the script that parses the RSS file into HTML expect a file name 
or url as an argument from the command line.  Not only is there no 
command line on the Mac, but in droplet form I can't use a URL as an 
argument (obvious reason ":").

BBEdit seems to pass the current selection/file as an array to the perl 
filter being used.

That means  that I can't just:

$rss->parse($my_input);

So I'm stuck.  The script below is BROKEN, mostly because I'm not clear 
on how to set up the input.  I can't (obviously) just pass the array as 
I'm doing here.

#!perl -w
# my_rss2html - converts an RSS file to HTML
# Modified for use as BBEdit Filter
# Brian McNett 10/24/1999
# orig. by Jonathan Eisenzopf. v1.0 19990901
# See http://www.webreference.com/perl for more information
# modified slightly for Mycoinfo.

# INCLUDES
use strict;
use XML::RSS;

my @infile = <>;

# create new instance of XML::RSS
my $rss = new XML::RSS;

    # parse the RSS file
    $rss->parse(@infile);

# print the HTML channel
&print_html($rss);

# SUBROUTINES
sub print_html {
    my $rss = shift;
       if ($rss->{'image'}->{'link'}) {
print <<HTML;
<table bgcolor="#333366" border="0" width="184"><tr><td>
<table cellspacing="1" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" border=0 
width="100%">
<tr>
<td valign="middle" align="center" bgcolor="#3366CC">
<center><a href="$rss->{'image'}->{'link'}"><img 
src="$rss->{'image'}->{'url'}" alt="$rss->{'image'}->{'title'}" border="0"
HTML

    print " width=\"$rss->{'image'}->{'width'}\""
	    if $rss->{'image'}->{'width'};
	print " height=\"$rss->{'image'}->{'height'}\""
	    if $rss->{'image'}->{'height'};
	print "></a></center>\n";
    }

print <<'HTML';
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
HTML

    # print the channel items
    foreach my $item (@{$rss->{'items'}}) {
	next unless defined($item->{'title'}) && defined($item->{'link'});
	print "<font size='-1'><li><a 
href=\"$item->{'link'}\">$item->{'title'}</a></font><br>\n";
    }

    # if there's a textinput element
    if ($rss->{'textinput'}->{'title'}) {
	print <<HTML;
<form method="get" action="$rss->{'textinput'}->{'link'}">
$rss->{'textinput'}->{'description'}<br> 
<input type="text" name="$rss->{'textinput'}->{'name'}"><br>
<input type="submit" value="$rss->{'textinput'}->{'title'}">
</form>
HTML
    }

    # if there's a copyright element
    if ($rss->{'channel'}->{'copyright'}) {
	print <<HTML;
<p align='right'><sub>$rss->{'channel'}->{'copyright'}</sub></p>
HTML
    }

    print <<HTML;
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
HTML
}

__END__

XML::RSS is a sub-class of XML::Parser, so you'll need both if you want 
to help out with this.  It's probably DEAD simple, given my peculiar 
combination of genius and cluelessness alluded to in the disclaimer above.

--B

# Brian McNett                                      Fungal Parataxonomy
# Webmaster, Staff Writer               Mycology Information (Mycoinfo)
#                              **The World's First Mycology E-Journal**   
# <mailto:webmaster@mycoinfo.com>            <http://www.mycoinfo.com/>
# First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you.
# Then you win.                                     --Mohandas Gandhi


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