Fellow Monks

I am looking for alert box which alerts me on my windows machine whenever an new post on perlmonks comes which matches my interest.
If it doesn't already exist, I am ready to build it with your help of good pointers

Thanks
Seeking art to alert myself
an artist

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Alertbox
by Mr. Muskrat (Canon) on Sep 09, 2002 at 17:03 UTC

    Sounds interesting!

    I haven't looked yet but Super Search may yield some interesting answers.

    Pointers:
    You'll want to use a cookie jar.
    Look into parsing the XML version of the Newest Nodes.
    If this will only be used on a windows system, look into Win32 for the MsgBox function to do your alert box. It's very handy.
    For a more cross-platform solution, Perl/Tk would probably be the simplest for creating an alert box.

Re: Alertbox
by blm (Hermit) on Sep 10, 2002 at 02:53 UTC

    I was working on a similar thing this morning to practise my XML parsing this time with XML::Parser.

    Things to note:

  • There is appears to be a seperate node for XML feed of Newest nodes called Newest Nodes XML Generator. Clicking on XML link in Newest Nodes doesn't seem to do much.

  • If you are hovering around a network like I do you could use the Win32::Message module to do the equivalent of Net send <username> <message>

  • I wouldn't want to poll the link to heavily to add undue burden on the servers. I wonder if and interval of 5 minutes would be enough. This is of course if you are on a Win32 network. I don't know what the equivlent is on a predominately unix network. (Probably because such broadcasts are evil ;-)