WebService::RTMAgent - UserAgent for the RememberTheMilk API


WebService-RTMAgent documentation Contained in the WebService-RTMAgent distribution.

Index


Code Index:

NAME

Top

 WebService::RTMAgent - UserAgent for the RememberTheMilk API

SYNOPSIS

Top

 $ua = WebService::RTMAgent->new;
 $ua->api_key($key_provided_by_rtm);
 $ua->api_secret($secret_provided_by_rtm);
 $ua->init;
 $url = $ua->get_auth_url;  # then do something with the URL
 $res = $ua->tasks_getList('filter=status:incomplete');

 ...

DESCRIPTION

Top

WebService::RTMAgent is a Perl implementation of the rememberthemilk.com API.

Calling API methods

All API methods documented at http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/api/ can be called as methods, changing dots for underscores and optionnaly taking off the leading 'rtm': $ua->auth_checkToken, $ua->tasks_add, etc.

Parameters should be given as a list of strings, e.g.:

 $ua->tasks_complete("list_id=4231233", "taskseries_id=124233", "task_id=1234");

Refer to the API documentation for each method's parameters.

Return values are the XML response, parsed through XML::Simple. Please refer to XML::Simple for more information (and Data::Dumper, to see what the values look like) and the sample rtm script for examples.

If the method call was not successful, undef is returned, and an error message is set which can be accessed with the error method:

 $res = $ua->tasks_getList;
 die $ua->error unless defined $res;

Please note that at this stage, I am not very sure that this is the best way to implement the API. "It works for me," but:

* Parameters may turn to hashes at some point
* Output values may turn to something more abstract and useful, as I gain experience with API usage.

Authentication and authorisation

Before using the API, you need to authenticate it. If you are going to be building a desktop application, you should get an API key and shared secret from the people at rememberthemilk.com (see http://groups.google.com/group/rememberthemilk-api/browse_thread/thread/dcb035f162d4dcc8 for rationale) and provide them to RTMAgent.pm with the api_key and api_secret methods.

You then need to proceed through the authentication cycle: create a useragent, call the get_auth_url method and direct a Web browser to the URL it returns. There RememberTheMilk will present you with an authorisation page: you can authorise the API to access your account.

At that stage, the API will get a token which identifies the API/user authorisation. RTMAgent saves the token in a file, so you should never need to do the authentication again.

Proxy and other strange things

The object returned by new is also a LWP::UserAgent. This means you can configure it the same way, in particular to cross proxy servers:

 $ua = new WebService::RTMAgent;
 $ua->api_key($key);
 $ua->api_secret($secret);
 $ua->proxy('http', 'http://proxy:8080');
 $ua->init;
 $list = $ua->tasks_getList;

Incidentally, this is the reason why the init method exists: init needs to access the network, so its work cannot be done in new as that would leave no opportunity to configure the LWP UserAgent.

PUBLIC METHODS

Top

$ua = WebService::RTMAgent->new;

Creates a new agent.

$ua->api_key($key);
$ua->api_secret($secret);

Set the API key and secret. These are obtained from the people are RememberTheMilk.com.

$ua->verbose('netin netout');

Sets what type of traces the module should print. You can use 'netout' to print all the outgoing messages, 'netin' to print all the incoming messages.

$err = $ua->error;

Get a message describing the last error that happened.

$ua->init;

Performs authentication with RTM and various other book-keeping initialisations.

$ua->get_auth_url;

Performs the beginning of the authentication: this returns a URL to which the user must then go to allow RTMAgent to access his or her account.

This mecanism is slightly contrieved and designed so that users do not have to give their username and password to third party software (like this one).

@undo = $ua->get_undoable;

Returns the transactions which we know how to undo (unless data has been lost, that's all the undo-able transaction that go with the timeline that is saved in the state file).

The value returned is a list of { id, op, [ params ] } with id the transaction id, op the API method that was called, and params the API parameters that were called.

$ua->clear_undo(3);

Removes an undo entry.

PRIVATE METHODS

Top

Don't use those and we'll stay friends.

$ua->sign(@params);

Returns the md5 signature for signing parameters. See RTM Web site for details. This should only be useful for the module, don't use it.

$ua->rtm_request("rtm.tasks.getList", "list_id=234", "taskseries_id=2"..)

Signs the parameters, performs the request, returns a parsed XML::Simple object.

FILES

Top

~/.rtmagent

XML file containing runtime data: frob, timeline, authentication token. This file is overwritten on exit, which means you should only have one instance of RTMAgent (this should be corrected in a future version).

SEE ALSO

Top

rtm, example command-line script. LWP. XML::Simple.

http://www.rutschle.net/rtm

AUTHOR

Top

Written by Yves Rutschle <rtm@rutschle.net>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Top


WebService-RTMAgent documentation Contained in the WebService-RTMAgent distribution.
package WebService::RTMAgent;

use strict;

our $VERSION = '0.5';

use LWP::UserAgent;
use XML::Simple;  # apt-get install libxml-simple-perl
#use Data::Dumper;
use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
use Carp;
use vars qw/$AUTOLOAD @ISA/;

our @ISA = qw/LWP::UserAgent/;

my $REST_endpoint = "http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/rest/";
my $auth_endpoint = "http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/auth/";

our $config_file = "$ENV{HOME}/.rtmagent";
our $config;  # reference to config hash

sub new {
    my ($class) = @_;
    my $self = bless {}, $class;
    $self->verbose('');
    return $self;
}

# Create accessors
BEGIN {
    my $subs;
    foreach my $data ( qw/error verbose api_secret api_key/ ) {
        $subs .= qq{
                        sub $data {
                                \$_[0]->{rtma_$data} =  
                                        defined \$_[1] ? \$_[1] : \$_[0]->{rtma_$data};
                        }
                }
    }
    eval $subs;
}

sub init {
    my ($self) = @_;

    if (-e $config_file) {
        die "$config_file: can't read or write\n" unless -r $config_file and -w $config_file;

        eval {
            $config = XMLin($config_file, KeyAttr=>'', ForceArray => ['undo']);
        };
        croak "$config_file: Invalid XML file" if $@ =~ /Document is empty/;
    }

    # Check Token
    if ($config->{token}) {
        my $res = $self->auth_checkToken;
        if (not defined $res) {
            delete $config->{frob};
            delete $config->{token};
            croak $self->error;
        }
    }

    # If we have a frob and no token, we're half-way through
    # authentication -- finish it
    if ($config->{frob} and not $config->{token}) {
        warn "frobbed -- getting token\n";
        my $res = $self->auth_getToken("frob=$config->{frob}");
        die $self->error."(Maybe you need to erase $config_file)\n" unless defined $res;
        $config->{token} = $res->{auth}->[0]->{token}->[0];
        warn "token $config->{token}\n";
    }

    # If we have no timeline, get one
    unless ($config->{timeline}) {
        my $res = $self->timelines_create();
        $config->{timeline} = $res->{timeline}->[0];
        $config->{undo} = [];
    }
}

sub get_auth_url {
    my ($self) = @_;

    my $res = $self->auth_getFrob();

    my $frob = $res->{'frob'}->[0];

    my @params;
    push @params, "api_key=".$self->api_key, "perms=delete", "frob=$frob";
    push @params, "api_sig=".($self->sign(@params));

    my $url = "$auth_endpoint?". (join '&', @params);

    # save frob for later
    $config->{'frob'} = $frob;

    return $url;
}

sub get_undoable {
    my ($self) = @_;

    return $config->{undo};
}

sub clear_undo {
    my ($self, $index) = @_;

    splice @{$config->{undo}}, $index, 1;
}

sub sign {
    my ($self, @params) = @_;

    my $sign_str = join '', sort @params;
    $sign_str =~ s/=//g;

    return md5_hex($self->api_secret."$sign_str");
}

sub rtm_request {
    my ($self, $request, @params) = @_;

    unshift @params, "method=$request";
    push @params, "api_key=".$self->api_key;
    push @params, "auth_token=$config->{token}" if exists $config->{token};
    push @params, "timeline=$config->{timeline}" if exists $config->{timeline};
    my $sig = $self->sign(@params);
    my $param = join '&', @params;

    my $req = HTTP::Request->new( POST => $REST_endpoint);
    $req->content_type('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
    $req->content("$param&api_sig=$sig");
    warn("request:\n".$req->as_string."\n\n") if $self->verbose =~ /netout/;

    my $res = $self->request($req);
    die $res->status_line unless $res->is_success;

    warn("response:\n".$res->as_string."\n\n") if $self->verbose =~ /netin/;
    return XMLin($res->content, KeyAttr=>'', ForceArray=>1);
}

# AUTOLOAD gets calls to undefined functions
# we add 'rtm' and change underscores to dots, to change perl function
# names to RTM API: tasks_getList => rtm.tasks.getList
# arguments are as strings:
# $useragent->tasks_complete("list_id=$a", "taskseries_id=$b" ...);
sub AUTOLOAD {
    my $function = $AUTOLOAD;

    my $self = shift;

    $function =~ s/^.*:://; # Remove class name
    $function =~ s/_/./g;   # Change underscores to dots (auth_getFrob => auth.getFrob)
    $function =~ s/^/rtm./ unless $function =~ /^rtm./; # prepends rtm if needed
    my $res = $self->rtm_request($function, @_);

    # Treat errors
    if (exists $res->{'err'}) {
        croak ("$function does not exist\n") if $res->{'err'}->[0]->{'code'} == 112;
        $self->error("$res->{'err'}->[0]->{'code'}: $res->{'err'}->[0]->{'msg'}\n");
        return undef;
    }

    # If action is undo-able, store transaction ID
    if (exists $res->{transaction} and 
        exists $res->{transaction}->[0]->{undoable}) {
        push @{$config->{undo}}, {
                'id' => $res->{transaction}->[0]->{id},
                'op' => $function,
                'params' => \@_,
            };
    }
    return $res;
}


# When destroying the object, save the config file
# (careful, this all means we can only have one instance running...)
sub DESTROY {
    return unless defined $config;
    open my $f, "> $config_file";
    print $f XMLout($config, NoAttr=>1, RootName=>'RTMAgent');
}

1; # End of RTMAgent.pm