The Code

To show you how easy it is to add IM connectivity to your scripts, we'll modify one from .

Save this script as bugbot.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::TableExtract;
use Net::AIM;my $aim_un = 'your AIM name';my $aim_pw = 'your AIM password';

# the base URL of the site we are scraping and
# the URL of the page where the bugtraq list is located.
my $base_url = "http://www.security-focus.com";
my $url      = "http://www.security-focus.com/archive/1";

# get our data.
my $html_file = get($url) or die "$!\n";

# create an iso date.
my ($day, $month, $year) = (localtime)[3..5];
$year += 1900; my $date = "$year-$month-$day";

# since the data we are interested in is contained in a table,
# and the table has headers, then we can specify the headers and
# use TableExtract to grab all the data below the headers in one
# fell swoop. We want to keep the HTML code intact so that we
# can use the links in our output formats. start the parse:
my $table_extract =
   HTML::TableExtract->new(
     headers   => [qw(Date Subject Author)],
     keep_html => 1 );
$table_extract->parse($html_file);

# parse out the desired info and
# stuff into a data structure.
my @parsed_rows; my $ctr = 0;
foreach my $table ($table_extract->table_states) {
   foreach my $cols ($table->rows) {
      @$cols[0] =~ m|(\d+/\d+/\d+)|;
      my %parsed_cols = ( "date" => $1 );

      # since the subject links are in the 2nd column, parse unwanted 
      # HTML and grab the anchor tags. Also, the subject links are relative, 
      # so we have to expand them. I could have used URI::URL, 
      # HTML::Element, HTML::Parse, etc. to do most of this as well.
      @$cols[1] =~ s/ class="[\w\s]*"//;
      @$cols[1] =~ m|(<a href="(.*)">(.*)</a>)|;
      $parsed_cols{"subject_html"} = "<a href=\"$base_url$2\">$3</a>";
      $parsed_cols{"subject_url"}  = "$base_url$2";
      $parsed_cols{"subject"}      = $3;

      # the author links are in the 3rd
      # col, so do the same thing.
      @$cols[2] =~ s/ class="[\w\s]*"//;
      @$cols[2] =~ m|(<a href="mailto:(.*@.*)">(.*)</a>)|;
      $parsed_cols{"author_html"}  = $1;
      $parsed_cols{"author_email"} = $2;
      $parsed_cols{"author"}       = $3;

      # put all the information into an
      # array of hashes for easy access.
      $parsed_rows[$ctr++] = \%parsed_cols;
   }
}

# create an AIM connection.
my $aim = Net::AIM->new;$aim->newconn(Screenname=>$aim_un,Password=>$aim_pw)or die "Cannot connect to AIM.";my $conn = $aim->getconn(  );# set up a handler for messages.
$conn->set_handler('im_in', \&on_im);$conn->set_handler('error', \&on_error);print "Logged on to AIM!\n\n";$aim->start;# incoming.
sub on_im {my ($aim, $evt, $from, $to) = @_;my $args = $evt->args(  );($from, my $friend, my $msg) = @$args;# cheaply remove HTML.
    $msg =~ s/<(.|\n)+?>//g;# if the user sends us a "bugtraq"
    # message, then send back our data.
    if( $msg =~ /bugtraq/ ) {# send each item one at a time.
         foreach my $cols (@parsed_rows)  {# format our scraped data.
             my $line = "$cols->{date} $cols->{subject} ".
                           "$cols->{subject_url}";# so as not to exceed the speed limit...
             sleep(2); $aim->send_im($from, $line);}} # give a warning if we don't know what they're saying.
    else { $aim->send_im($from, "I  only understand 'bugtraq'!"); }}# oops!sub on_error {my ($self, $evt) = @_;my ($error, @stuff) = @{$evt->args(  )};# Translate error number into English.
    # then filter and print to STDERR.
    my $errstr = $evt->trans($error);$errstr =~ s/\$(\d+)/$stuff[$1]/ge;print "ERROR: $errstr\n";

}

Notice that inside the on_im subroutine, it checks the incoming message for the word bugtraq before proceeding. It's a good idea to set up rules like this for any kind of queries you allow, because bots should always send a message about success or failure. This is also a good way to set up a robot with multiple capabilities; perhaps your next version will also accept bugtraq, similar to, or word lookup, all built using code from within this book.