NAME

Mail::Folder::NNTP - An NNTP folder interface for Mail::Folder.

WARNING: This code is in alpha release. Expect the interface to change.

SYNOPSIS

"use Mail::Folder::NNTP;"

DESCRIPTION

This module provides an interface to newsgroups accessible via the NNTP protocol.

METHODS

open($foldername)

Populates the "Mail::Folder" object with information about the folder.

The given foldername can be given one of two formats. Either "news://NEWSHOST/NEWSGROUP" where "NEWSHOST" is the nntp host and "NEWSGROUP" is the news group of interest, or "#news:NEWSGROUP" in which case the "NNTPSERVER" environment variable is referenced to determine the news host to connect to.

Please note that it opens an NNTP connection for each open NNTP folder.

If no "Timeout" option is specified, it defaults to a timeout of 120 seconds.

Call the superclass "open" method.
Make sure it is a valid NNTP foldername.
Connect to the NNTP server referenced in $foldername.
Perform an NNTP "group" command to determine quantity and range of articles available.
Loop through available article numbers, retrieve and cache the headers.
Set "current_message" to "first_message".

close

Calls the superclass "get_message" method and shuts down the connection to the NNTP server.

sync

Currently a no-op and returns 0.

Eventually will expunge articles marked as seen, look for new articles, update the ".newsrc" (or equivalent) file, and return the number of new articles found.

pack

Since the association between article and article number is determined by the server, this method is a no-op.

It return 1.

get_message($msg_number)

Calls the superclass "get_message" method.

Retrieves the contents of the news article pointed to by the given $msg_number into a Mail::Internet object reference, caches the header, marks the message as '"seen"', and returns the reference.

It returns "undef" on failure.

get_message_file($msg_number)

Not currently implemented. Returns "undef".

get_header($msg_number)

If the particular header has never been retrieved then "get_header" retrieves the header for the given news article from the news server, converts it into a "Mail::Header" object and returns a reference to the object.

If the header has already been retrieved in a prior call to "get_header", then the cached entry is returned.

It returns "undef" on failure.

AUTHOR

Kevin Johnson <kjj@pobox.com>