BlogAgent LIVES!
The agents are now up and running for MSN (blogagent@manywhere.com), AOL (BlogAgent) and Jabber (BlogAgent@jabber.com). You can download the source code here.
Note:This code is essentially the same code from a week or so ago, however, it's been cleaned a bit a reworked into components so you can run different IMs at the same time on the same VM. The mystery bug that shut down the BlogAgent last week is still in there... I haven't been able to figure out what caused it. However, this app has full debugging (via Apache's Log4J) so I'll be able to have a full analysis of the problem when it happens again. The main differences between this app and the other is the inclusion of the MSN and Jabber libraries. I finally worked through their quirks and got them running in a basic mode. MSN should send newlines and not time out (we'll see about that) and Jabber should notify you of it's presence and automatically respond to subscribe messages (wacky xml packets that the Jabber system sends when you add my name to your buddies).
From the readme:
July 15, 2002
Quick Readme
There is one BlogAgent for MSN, Jabber and AOL message systems.
The BlogAgent is written in Java. To use it you need to install at least the Sun Java Runtime Environment. I'm using JDK 1.3.1_01 right now, so I can't guarantee this app will work with anything else.
The general functionality of the BlogAgent is like this: When you run the agent, you have to provide a username and password for each of the various IM services. You do this by editing the settings.xml file in the conf directory and modifying the obvious sections. The agent will log in as those users and respond to messages sent to it. Anything sent that the agent doesn't understand (like "help") and it will respond with instructions on how to use it.
The agent checks every 3 minutes for updates on Weblogs.com and notifies you with an instant message if one of your watched blogs appears on the site since the last time it notified you.
To Run:
You should be able to run this app simply by calling the run.bat or run.sh file after editing the settings.xml file.
Inside these scripts something like this is executed:
java com.manywhere.agent.BlogAgent ..\conf\settings.xml
If you don't give the correct arguments when trying to run the app, it'll show them to you.
To Build:
There's an ANT build script included with this package. You don't need to build this app to use it since I've included the BlogAgent.jar file already compiled. If you want to build the app, you'll need the http://jakarta.apache.org 's ANT installation set up. Check their website for more info. Basically just type "ant" and it'll compile everything and package it up in a build directory.
General BlogAgent Usage:
You can add a blog to be watched to the system by typing "add URL"
For example: add http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/To delete a watched blog type "delete URL".
To delete all the watched blogs type "clear".
To see your all your watched blogs, type "list".
If you use Radio Userland or some other aggregator where your files are shared out as an OPML file, you can import all your blogs at once by typing "import URL"
For example: import http://radio.weblogs.com/0001015/userland/scriptingNewsLeftLinks.opml
If you have any questions or comments email: russ@russellbeattie.com .
-Russ