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    WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::phpBB 0.01
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NAME
    WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::phpBB - Screen scraper for phpBB installations

SYNOPSIS
        use WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable;
        use Log::Log4perl qw(:easy);
        Log::Log4perl->easy_init($DEBUG);

        my $mech = new WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable;

        $mech->get("http://some.forum.site.com/forum");
        $mech->phpbb_login("username", "password");

            # Get a list of forums
        my $forums = $mech->phpbb_forums();
        for my $forum (@$forums) {
            print "Forum:", $forum->text(), "\n";
        }

            # Enter a forum matched by a regex
        $mech->phpbb_forum_enter(qr(^The Forum Name$));

            # Return a list of topics
        my $topics = $mech->phpbb_topics();
        for my $topic (@$topics) {
            print "headline=$topic->{text} url=$topic->{url}\n";
        }

DESCRIPTION
    "WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::phpBB" is a screen scraper for phpBB driven
    forum sites. It can log into the phpBB web interface, pull forum and
    topics names and perform administrative tasks like deleting posts.

    FUNCTIONALITY IS CURRENTLY LIMITED, READ ON WHAT'S AVAILABLE SO FAR.

    "WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::phpBB" is implemented as a plugin to
    WWW::Mechanize, using Joe McMahon's WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable framework.

    $mech->phpbb_login($user, $passwd)
        Log into the phpBB web interface using the given credentials. It
        requires that the $mech object currently points to a phpBB page
        showing a "Login" link.

        Note that most forums don't require you to log in in order to read
        the messages, so this is only necessary if you want to perform
        administrative tasks (like phpbb_post_remove()) or read a private
        forum.

        Returns "undef" if the login fails and fires a Log4perl message at
        level ERROR.

    my $forums = $mech->phpbb_forums()
        If the $mech object points to a forum site's overview page listing
        the forums, phpbb_forums will return a ref to an array of forums.
        Every element of the array is a WWW::Mechanize::Link object and
        therefore has the methods "text()" and "url" to show forum name and
        the forum url:

                # Get a list of forums
            my $forums = $mech->phpbb_forums();
            for my $forum (@$forums) {
                print "Forum:", $forum->text(), " ", 
                      $forum->url(), "\n";
            }

    $mech->phpbb_forum_enter($regex)
        If the $mech object points to a forum site's overview page listing
        the forums, "phpbb_forum_enter" will have the WWW::Mechanize object
        enter the first forum matching the specified regex:

                # Enter a forum matched by a regex
            $mech->phpbb_forum_enter(qr(^The Forum Name$));

        Returns 1 on success and undef on failure.

    my $topics = $mech->phpbb_topics()
        If the $mech object points to a forum page listing the topics,
        "phpbb_topics" will scrape the topics off that page (which might
        only be a fraction of the topics available for the given forum):

                # Return a list of topics
            my $topics = $mech->phpbb_topics();
            for my $topic (@$topics) {
                print "headline=$topic->{text} url=$topic->{url}\n";
            }

        Every element of the array ref returned is a hashref, containing
        values for the keys "text" (topic headline), "url" (url to the first
        page showing this topic), "count" (number of postings for this
        topic).

    $mech->phpbb_post_remove($post_id)
        Note that you need to perform a successful login() before using this
        method. phpbb_post_remove takes a post ID (like the '6' in
        "forum/posting.php?mode=quote&p=6"), pulls up the page showing the
        post, clicks the 'X' button and then clicks 'Yes' in the
        confirmation dialog to delete the posting. Handy for automatically
        deleting spammer postings.

AUTHOR
    Mike Schilli, m@perlmeister.com

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    Copyright (C) 2006 by Mike Schilli, m@perlmeister.com

    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.5 or, at
    your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.

