Content Syndication with RSS

Other Outputs and Selective Parsing

In all of our examples so far, we have written the parsed feed to a file handle for use inside another web page. This is just the start. We could use the same basic structure to output to just about anything that handles text. Example 9-4 is a script that sends the top headline of a feed to a mobile phone via the Short Message Service (SMS). It uses the WWW::SMS module, outputting to the first web-based free SMS service it can find that works.

Example 9-4. rsssms.pl sends the first headline title to a mobile phone via SMS

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP::Simple;
use XML::Simple;
use WWW::SMS;
   
# Take the command line arguments, URL first, then complete number of mobile
my $url=$ARGV[0];
my $number=$ARGV[1];
   
# Retrieve the feed, or die disgracefully
my $feed_to_parse = get ($url) or die "I can't get the feed you want";
   
# Parse the XML
my $parser = XML::Simple->new(  );
my $rss = $parser->XMLin("$feed_to_parse");
   
# Get the data we want
my $message = "NEWSFLASH:: $rss->{'channel'}->{'item'}->[0]->{'title'}";
   
# Send the message
my @gateway = WWW::SMS->gateways(  );
my $sms = WWW::SMS->new($number, $message);
foreach my $gateway(@gateway) {if ($sms->send($gateway)) {
          print 'Message sent!';
            last;
     } else {
          print "Error: $WWW::SMS::Error\n";
     }}

You can use the script in Example 9-4 from the command line or crontab like so:

            perl rsssms.pl http://full.urlof/feed.xml 123456789

You can see how one might set this up on crontab to send ...