NAME

Model3D::WavefrontObject - Perl extension for reading, manipulating and writing polygonal Alias Wavefront 3D models

WebPresence::Profile - Perl extension for retrieving arbitrary user profile or other similar data. This is a base class and is essentially useless on its own. The individual subclasses should be called, instead.

SYNOPSIS

    my $wp = new WebPresence::Profile::SomeSubclass(user => $id);
    for my $k (keys %{$wp->{profile}}) {
        if (ref $wp->{profile}->{$k} eq 'ARRAY') {
            print "$k: ", join(', ', @{$wp->{profile}->{$k}), "\n";
        }
        else {
            print $k: $wp->{profile}->{$k}\n";
        }
    }

DESCRIPTION

WebPresence::Profile is a base class intended for retriving user profile data from various sources no the web. This can be used to prefill profile data on your own site or for data collation and data mining purposes.

WebPresence::Profile does almost nothing on its own (it sets the 'user' key to whatever you passed in and that's it). However, it sets up basic access and constructor methods for subclasses which are intended to work as plugins.

Instead, use WebPresence::Profile::X where X is a defined 'plugin' module that inherits from WebPresence::Profile.

METHODS

Constructor

    new()

The new() method returns a new WebPresence::Profile::X object where X is the subclass called (for instance, ICQ, LJ, Tribe, etc). If the subclass X has defined and thus overriden the SetInfo() method, and if said method works (in exactly the way it doesn't in the intended AOL module), then it will return a hashref containing key-value pairs referring to delectable tidbits from that user's profile -- in theory, anything relevant and useful and distinct to the user, but in reality whatever the coder of module X has bothered to parse for.

At the very least you'll need to pass new() a user ID. It's recommended that developers of module X (still whatever that may be) remain consistent in their handling of this name for compatibility's sake, and call it 'user', as this is the bit of data the constructor is going to pass to the SetInfo() method. However, if what you're retriving requires additional data and 'user' doesn't make sense, you can always override new(), too, I guess. Just try not to get too confusing and keep the interface nice and standardised. Thanks.

In some cases Module X (whatever it may be) will require additional parametres to be passed in. For instance, the LJ (LiveJournal) module would like you to pass in a 'wp_admin_email' parametre, and wouldn't mind if you sent it a 'wp_user_agent' parametre. See below for why.

Public Access Methods

Get(profile_key)

Use the Get() method to retrieve a named profile property that the subclass parses for.

Set(profile_key, new_value)

Use the Set() method to set a names profile property that the subclass parses for.

AUTOLOADed methods by profile property name

You should be able to call any profile property by its right name as a method and retieve that value just like calling Get(). Additionally, if you supply a value the property will be set to that, just like calling Set().

Sort-of Private Methods, and making plugins

Each subclass X should have at the very least a method called SetInfo(user). The purpose of this method is to retrieve and set the info. This may be done in tons of different ways. In general, LWP is expected to be used, though if you're grabbing information frmo a tn3270 screen, it might not.

Any which way, this method, SetInfo(user) is where the screen-scraping magick should generally happen. This method should return undef on fail, but it doesn't really care. Extremely friendly programmers will set some sort of error or errstr property in the object that calls the method, and I've been friendly in one case anyway.

Included subclasses and nasty things to say about them

The included subclasses all have a chance of returning multiple values for one key. When this is the case, the value will be an arrayref. However, multiple instances of a single value will not be included, so if the value contains ten of the same thing, only a scalar will be stored (of that one thing).

Because of this, multi-value key values will not come out in any particular order, as they are being filtered through a hash to remove duplicates.

AOL:

Doesn't work. Don't bother with it. The code is all there and SHOULD work it seems, but it just doesn't. If it worked, you'd have to pass it a valid AOL or AIM screen name and password to access the info. Maybe someday it will work, but not today. I give up for now.

ICQ:

All you need to pass in is the ICQ UIN as user to the constructor. Schweet, huh? It's up to the user how much data they have made available online.

Yahoo:

Again, just pass in the Yahoo ID as the user to the constructor to get Yahoo user profile info. It's up to the user how much stuff they have in here (and most Yahoo users have woefully little I've noticed).

Tribe

Pass in a tribe.net username and get back their Tribe.net profile info, complete with a list of tribes they belong to that was unusually a pain in the butt to parse out, but I did it somehow.

Usernames with a - or _ in them are homogenised to the version the module needs to get the data back, but you won't see this.

LJ

Pass in a LiveJournal username and get back their full LJ user info. LiveJournal is nice about this sort of thing compared to many sites and acknowledges that people would want to do this. They prefer that you use their RSS feeds, but this doesn't because the data's not all there (and they stated it as a preference, not a hard and fast rule). The two rules they do insist on are:

  1: Send a UserAgent string with your email and, if applicable, URL.
  2: Cache, where possible.

Number two is up to you. As for number 1, you're strongly encouraged to pass in a 'wp_admin_email' property to the constructor method, as it will use this to set your email address in the useragent string. If you don't, the script will try to guess by using your apache SERVER_ADMIN email, or sticking your LOGNAME or USER together with the results of `dnsdomainname` or `hostname`. This has a mild chance of being right, but may tell their logs things you don't want to know, so set it.

Optionally, you can just pass in a 'wp_user_agent' parametre and set the UserAgent to whatever you like. If you don't, it should come out well formed sort of like so:

    your.script (URL-to-your-script-or-just-name-if-not-CGI; email:your_email) WebPresence/1.0 LWP/lwp-version Perl/perl-version CGI/cgi-version

(the CGI part on the end will only appear when called from a browser unless you set the GATEWAY_INTERFACE environment variable yourself).

How to roll your own extension:

In simplest form, you want to do something like so:

package WebPresence::Profile::X; # Don't use X. Use something that makes sense. use WebPresence::Profile; @ISA = ('WebPresence::Profile');

use strict;

sub SetInfo { my $obj = shift; my $user = shift;

    # fetch the data from somewhere
    # Parse the data as necessary

}

1;

AUTHOR

Sean 'Dodger' Cannon qbqtre@ksk3q.arg =~ tr/a-mn-z/n-za-m/ http://www.xfx3d.net

BUGS

• AOL profile retrival doesn't work.

• Author consideres this AOL's fault

• Author has many rude names for AOL

• Most other people do, too

GOOD INTENTIONS

• Make AOL work

• Make more subclasses, like MySpace and DevArt and things

• Realise that this thing works for all sorts of things other than profiles and ajust thoughts accordingly.

• Do more work on the Model3D::WavefrontObject module

• Feed the cat, cause she's yelling at me again

SEE ALSO

perl(1)

cpanm WebPresence::Profile

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install WebPresence::Profile