ToledoForum Forum Checker

About

ToledoForum is a small Perl script written by Davy Preuveneers that checks for new messages on Toledo discussion forums. It allows professors and teaching assistants to no longer check each hour of the day to see if students have posted new messages. When an email address is provided (see source of script), it will send an email if new unread messages are available.

The script requires the WWW::Mechanize and Crypt::SSLeay Perl packages, and is made available under the GPL license.

Latest version

Download here: ToledoForum.pl (version 1.7)

Usage

Run as follows: perl ToledoForum.pl

The script will first ask for a username, password. It will then show an overview of course ids and ask which course you would like to check. These parameters can also be specified at the command line or in a configuration file.

Optional parameters: ToledoForum.pl [user] [password] [courseid] [mailto] [mailserver]
  • [user] Your m-number, s-number or u-number
  • [password] Your password
  • [courseid] The ID of the course (see below). You should be enrolled in the course
  • [mailto] Your email address
  • [mailserver] Your SMTP mail server
Example: ToledoForum.pl u0012345 SeCrEt01 _21737_1 me_at_cs.kuleuven.be mail.cs.kuleuven.be

Another possibility is to fill in these values directly in the ToledoForum script. The only mandatory information is the user, password and courseid. If not specified in the script or at the command line, the script will prompt you for this information. The mailto and mailserver parameters are optional and can be omitted if you do not want mail notification.

Yet another possibility is create a configuration file with the name $HOME/.ToledoForum in your home folder with the following content:

user=u0012345
password=secret
courseid=_21737_1     
coursedesc=_21737_1:Informatica-Werktuigen
mailto=firstname.lastname_at_cs.kuleuven.be
mailserver=mail.cs.kuleuven.be

The courseid and coursedesc entries can be specified several times if you want the forums of several courses to be checked.

Overview Course IDs 2004-2005

Course IDCourse name
_21737_1Informatica-Werktuigen
_18250_1Gedistribueerde systemen en computernetwerken
_18247_1Methodologieen voor de Ontwikkeling van Programmatuur

Known issues

  • Strange output when no posting available in the discussion forum

Change History

This section contains a list of all changes starting after the first release of ToledoForum.

ToledoForum v1.7c (November 17, 2006) download
  • Adding support for Shibboleth (thanks once again Lieven)

ToledoForum v1.6c (April 24, 2006) download
  • Another bugfix in order to support the new layout of the Toledo site (thanks again Lieven)

ToledoForum v1.6b (October 20, 2005) download
  • Provide course description configuration support in config file (thanks Lieven)

ToledoForum v1.6 (October 20, 2005) download
  • Provide configuration file support

ToledoForum v1.5 (August 2, 2005) download
  • Reimplement the redirection to the discussion board

ToledoForum v1.4 (April 27, 2005) download
  • Change the toledo server from deneb.cc.kuleuven.ac.be to cygnus.cc.kuleuven.ac.be.

ToledoForum v1.3 (October 19, 2004) download
  • Allow email and mailserver specification at the command line.

ToledoForum v1.2 (August 15, 2004) download
  • Allow sending email when new messages are available.

ToledoForum v1.1 (August 12, 2004) download
  • Clean up the source
  • Disable screen output while typing password (only on Un*x-like platforms)

ToledoForum v1.0 (August 8, 2004) download
  • Initial release
__________________________________________________
Page maintained by Davy Preuveneers
Last updated: June 2nd, 2010
Disclaimer: this is a personal page.