use LWP;
use HTTP::Request::Common;

use strict;
use constant URL => 'http://perlmonks.org/index.pl';

$|++;

my $node = shift;
print "USAGE: $0 [node_id]\n" and exit unless $node;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent('node_grabber/1.0 (' . $ua->agent .')');

my $request  = POST(URL, Content => [ node_id => $node ] );
my $response = $ua->request($request) or die "can't download id $node"
+;
my $html     = $response->content();
my ($date)   = $html =~ /a>\s*on\s*([^<]+?)<\/font/i;
my ($title)  = $html =~ /<title>([^<]+)<\/title>/;

my $chunk;
my @ends = (
   qr|<BR>\s*<hr\s*\/>|,
   qr|<BR>\s+<BR><font size=2><I>|,
   qr|<CENTER>\s+back to <A HREF="|,
   qr|<BR>go see more <A HREF="|,
   qr|<center><TABLE width=|,
); 

foreach (@ends) {
   ($chunk) = $html =~ /<INPUT type=hidden name=op value=vote>(.*)(?:$
+_)/ms;
   last if $chunk;
}

unless ($chunk) {
   ($chunk) = $html =~ /<!--\s+-->(.*)(?:<!--\s+-->)/ms;
}

print "couldn't parse it :(\n" and exit unless $chunk;
print "$title [$date]\n", $chunk;
[download]

P.S. an RSS feed that grabbed just a node sure would be nice. :)

UPDATE (April 2,2002): Kanji just /msg'ed me about displaytype=xml (i could have sworn that this was broken some time ago). This will make the above code not only overkill, but just plain silly. I'll be working on a replacement in the meantime this morning. And there it is below ---> ;)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)