WWW::Myspace::Message(User Contributed Perl DocumentatWWW::Myspace::Message(3)NAMEWWW::Myspace::Message - Auto-message your MySpace friends from Perl
scripts
VERSION
Version 0.16
WARNING
WARNING - DO NOT USE THIS MODULE FOR MASS MESSAGING OR COMMENTING.
Myspace will cripple or disable your account:
Older accounts:
Messages will appear in your Sent folder but not in the receiver's
inbox, although they'll be able to see it if they're paging through
from another message. The receiver will get a "New Comments"
notification and be able to see your comment, but it won't appear on
the profile page.
Newer accounts:
If you created your myspace account in or after June 2006
(approximately), and you use a "bot" (including this module) to send
messages, your message sending ability will be disabled and your
account may be deleted. This is due to security features myspace has
implemented to prevent spam abuse by people using multiple accounts.
SYNOPSIS
use WWW::Myspace;
use WWW::Myspace::Message;
my $myspace = new WWW::Myspace;
my $message = new WWW::Myspace::Message( $myspace );
$message->subject("Hi there!");
$message->message("I'm sending you a message!\nIsn't that cool?\n");
$message->add_to_friends( 1 );
$message->friend_ids( $myspace->get_friends );
$message->send_message;
The above will send a message to all our myspace friends, stopping if
it sends max_count messages or if it receives a CAPTCHA request.
Running the same routine again will continue sending where it left off,
so if you have a lot of friends you could run it from a cron job.
WWW::Myspace::Message lets you create a message and send it to a group
of friends. It implements a counter to avoid tripping WWW::Myspace
anti-spam features. If you want to circumvent anti-spam features, this
is not the module for you.
EXAMPLES
Since you may have more than 300 people to message, the following
script will send a message to all of your friends, and then reset the
exclusions file. This allows it to run as a sort of daemon. It will
run for days if necessary and stop when finished.
use WWW::Myspace;
use WWW::Myspace::Message;
my $myspace = new WWW::Myspace;
my $message = WWW::Myspace::Message->new( $myspace );
$message->subject("Hi there!");
$message->message("I'm sending you a message!\nIsn't that cool?\n");
$message->friend_ids( $myspace->get_friends );
my $response = "";
# Send our message to our friends until we're done - may take
# several days if we're popular.
while ( $response ne "DONE" ) {
# Send to as many as we can right now. Will stop either
# because it's DONE, it was asked for a CAPTCHA response,
# or because it maxed out the COUNTER.
$response = $message->send_message;
# Wait for a day. (You can probably wait for just 12 hours).
sleep 24*60*60;
}
# We're done sending this message - reset the exclusions file
# completely.
$message->reset_exclusions;
Note that because of the log WWW::Myspace::Message keeps, either script
could be interrupted and restarted without re-sending to anyone.
The "while" loop above can be replaced with the "send_all" convenience
method:
$message->send_all;
This is probably the most practical example:
# Set up
use WWW::Myspace;
use WWW::Myspace::Message;
my $myspace = new WWW::Myspace;
# Create the message
my $message = WWW::Myspace::Message->new( $myspace );
$message->subject("Hi there!");
$message->message("I'm sending you a message!\nIsn't that cool?\n");
$message->friend_ids( $myspace->get_friends );
# Send our message to our friends until we're done - may take
# several days if we're popular.
$message->send_all;
# We're done sending this message - reset the exclusions file
# completely.
$message->reset_exclusions;
Again, you could kill and restart this script and it'd pick up where it
left off (and even incorporiate any changes in your friend list!). Of
course if it finished and you restarted it, it'd re-message everyone.
ACCESSOR METHODS
myspace
Sets/retreives the myspace object through which we'll send the message.
subject
Sets/retreives the subject of the message we're to post.
message
Sets/retrieves the message we're to post.
body
Convenience method, same as calling "message". ($message->body("this
is my message") reads better sometimes).
add_to_friends
$message->add_to_friends( 1 );
If called with 1 true value, HTML code for an "Add to friends" button
will be added to the end of the message.
IMPORTANT NOTE: As of August, 2006 Myspace turns this code into a "view
profile" code, which currently redirects until the browser locks up or
reports an error. So, setting this to 1 will now display a "View My
Profile" link at the end of the message instead of an "Add to friends"
button.
skip_re
$message->skip_re( 'i hate everybody!* ?(<br>)?' );
If set, is passed to the send_message method in Myspace.pm causing
profiles that match the RE to be skipped. This failure is logged so
the profile will not be attempted again, to prevent a huge list of
failed profiles from forming and being retried over and over if you're
running the script daily.
friend_ids
Sets/retreives the list of friend IDs to which we're going to send the
message.
$message->friend_ids( 12345, 12347, 123456 ); # Set the list of friends
@friend_ids = $message->friend_ids; # Retreive the list of friends
cache_file
WWW::Myspace::Message keeps persistent track of which friends it's
messaged to avoid duplicates even across multiple runs. It saves data
about its messaging in the file specified in cache_file. Defaults to
$myspace->cache_dir/messaged. cache_file will be created if it doesn't
exist. If you specify a path, all directories in the path must exist
(the module will not create directories for you).
max_count
Defaults to 100. This sets how many messages we'll post before pausing.
This is mostly to avoid triggering overuse messages. (You're allowed
about 360 per day (possibly per 12 hours period?)).
noisy
Defaults to 0 (not noisy). If set to 1, detailed progress will be
output.
html
Defaults to 0. If set to 1, the "noisy" output will contain basic HTML
tags so you can send the output to a web browser. Use this if you're
displaying using a CGI script.
delay_time
Defaults to 24 hours (24*60*60). Specifies the amount of time to wait
between sends when using the send_all method. If set to 0, send_all
will return instead of sleeping. This is useful if you want to run a
script daily from a crontab for example.
message_delay
Sets the delay between message sends. Defaults to 0, but you probably
want to set this to something like 10.
random_delay
If set to 1, delays randomly between 3 seconds and the value of
message_delay + 3. Defaults to 0.
paired_arguments
This method is used internally to define the -s and -m flags. If you
subclass WWW::Myspace::Message, you can override this method to define
more switches. The values of these are loaded into $self->{arguments}.
i.e. $self->{arguments}->{'-s'} would give you the subject of the
message.
METHODS
new( $myspace )
Initialze and return a new WWW::Myspace::Message object. $myspace is a
WWW::Myspace object.
Example
use WWW::Myspace; use WWW::Myspace::Message;
my $myspace = new WWW::Myspace;
my $message = new WWW::Myspace::Message( $myspace );
exclusions
Returns a list of the friends we're not going to send the message to
(because we already have). Returns the list in numerical order from
lowest to highest. You probably only need this method for communicating
with the user.
Example
( @already_messaged ) = $message->exclusions;
messaged
Returns a reference to a hash of friendIDs we've messaged and the
status of the attempted messaging. Reads the data from the exclusions
cache file if it hasn't already been read.
send_message
Send the message to the friends in the friend_ids list.
The send_message method will automatically skip all friendIDs in the
"exclusions" list (see the exclusions method above). It will post
until it has posted "max_count" successful posts, or until it receives
a CAPTCHA request ("please enter the characters in the image above").
As of version 0.14, send_message will check the Last Login date of the
friend_id to which it's sending each message (using Myspace.pm's
"last_login" method). If the Last Login is older than 60 days ago, the
friendID will be skipped and "FL" will be logged. The friendID will be
exluded from future runs to prevent future runs from re-checking a huge
list of probably dead accounts.
send_message returns a status string indicating why it stopped:
CAPTCHA if a CAPTCHA image code was requested.
USAGE if we got a message saying we've exceeded our daily usage.
COUNTER if it posted max_count comments and stopped.
FAILURES if it keeps getting errors (more than 50 in a row).
DONE if it posted everywhere it could.
send_all
This convenience method implements the while loop script example in the
SYNOPSIS section above. If the response is "DONE", it exits. Otherwise,
it sleeps for the number of seconds set in "delay_time" and calls send
again. It repeats this until it receives "DONE" from the send method.
send_all does NOT reset the exclusions file.
Returns the last response code received from send_message. This will
always be "DONE" unless delay_time is set to 0 (which is redundant, but
exists for scripting convenience as it allows users of your script to
set delay_time to 0 if they want to control the messaging, without you
having to call a different method - see message_group for example).
EXAMPLE
use WWW::Myspace;
use WWW::Myspace::Message;
my $myspace = new WWW::Myspace;
my $message = new WWW::Myspace::Message( $myspace );
$message->subject("Hi there!");
$message->message("This is a great message wraught with meaning.");
$message->friend_ids( $myspace->get_friends );
$message->send_all;
reset_exclusions
Resets the cache file (which contains previously messaged friendIDs
that we'd exclude).
save( filename )
Saves the message to the file specified by "filename".
load( filename )
Loads a message in YAML format (i.e. as saved by the save method) from
the file specified by filename.
AUTHOR
Grant Grueninger, "<grantg at cpan.org>"
BUGS
· new method should probably accept a hash of arguments to set all
accessable settings (i.e. cache_file). Should also be callable with
no arguments.
· If cache_file is called with no arguments and cache_file has not
been set, it will create the cache dir by invoking the
make_cache_dir method of the myspace object. It should probably not
create the directory until it's actually writing to the file. Of
course, if you don't set cache_file, the first time the method is
called would be when writing to the cache file.
· If the myspace object hasn't been passed to the
WWW::Myspace::Message object yet, and cache_file is called to
retreive the default cache_file, the method will croak (as it's
trying to call $myspace->make_cache_dir).
· If you somehow write to the exclusions file before the exclusions
file has been read, $self->messaged will not read the exclusions
cache file, and will therefore have an incomplete list. This
shouldn't happen in normal operation as the send_message method
reads the exclusions file when it's called.
Please report any bugs or feature requests to "bug-www-myspace at
rt.cpan.org", or through the web interface at
http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=WWW-Myspace
<http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=WWW-Myspace>. I will
be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on
your bug as I make changes.
SUPPORT
You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
perldoc WWW::Myspace::Message
You can also look for information at:
· AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation
http://annocpan.org/dist/WWW-Myspace <http://annocpan.org/dist/WWW-
Myspace>
· CPAN Ratings
http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/WWW-Myspace
<http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/WWW-Myspace>
· RT: CPAN's request tracker
http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=WWW-Myspace
<http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=WWW-Myspace>
· Search CPAN
http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-Myspace
<http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-Myspace>
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSCOPYRIGHT & LICENSE
Copyright 2006 Grant Grueninger, all rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl v5.14.1 2006-09-16 WWW::Myspace::Message(3)
