Message-ID: <66ba88de@news.ausics.net> From: not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) Subject: Re: Emigration from Usenet [was: Re: PTD was the most-respected of the AUE regulars ...] Newsgroups: comp.misc References: <20240724115828.5d9d85d9305fe8300a91db5d@g{oogle}mail.com> <66a2d000@news.ausics.net> <20240726013343.02805fe30e4853cf7cd40797@gmail.moc> <66a31b29@news.ausics.net> <2al*V0ORz@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> User-Agent: tin/2.0.1-20111224 ("Achenvoir") (UNIX) (Linux/2.4.31 (i586)) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.ausics.net Date: 13 Aug 2024 08:12:46 +1000 Organization: Ausics - https://newsgroups.ausics.net Lines: 52 X-Complaints: abuse@ausics.net Path: ...!news-out.netnews.com!s1-3.netnews.com!feeder.usenetexpress.com!tr1.iad1.usenetexpress.com!usenet.blueworldhosting.com!diablo1.usenet.blueworldhosting.com!news.ausics.net!not-for-mail Bytes: 3778 Theo wrote: > Computer Nerd Kev wrote: >> Web forums keep annoying me more and more with bloated interfaces, >> so I'm using them less and less, yet there's less and less to read >> on Usenet too. So lately I've been considering, not entirely >> seriously, writing a program to scrape specific web forums and >> generate a news spool with the content of the forum's latest posts >> for me to read (either locally, or perhaps remotely via NNTP). >> >> Has anyone done this before? I know there are various web forum >> platforms that support NNTP server-side, but I'm talking about web >> forums hosted by other people who I have no association or >> influence with. Has anyone done something that's purely a >> client-side implementation? > > There's a mobile app called Tapatalk, which hooks into a number of web > forums to make them mobile friendly, including posting. I think they have > plugins for various platforms like phpBB, which forum operators can install > to get access to their forum from mobiles. If you see postings on a forum > that include text like 'Sent from my Samsung SM-GT9711QB via Tapatalk' then > that forum is Tapatalk enabled (or was at the time of posting). Interesting, though I don't think I've ever seen reference to it on any forum I view regularly so they probably don't have the Tapatalk plug-in installed. > It's been a decade or more since I looked at it, but thinking was that it > might be possible to hook into the Tapatalk interface and get some kind of > access to the raw forum database, rather than scraping the forum's web page. > > Tapatalk still seems to be a thing, but use of phpBB and similar forums has > declined. Maybe they have plugins for Discourse and friends now? > > Anyway, it might be worth digging into the Tapatalk protocol and seeing if > there's a way to hook into it from outside the Tapatalk ecosystem. I have > no idea if it's possible. Looks like it's possible, this PHP lib. has an extensive set of functions: https://github.com/netzmacht/tapatalk-client-api Tapatalk don't support Discourse, but do support the other common forum platforms I was looking at. It might be interesting if I get keen enough to set up a Gmane-style news server where other people can submit forums to be added, but for my own use it doesn't look like it's installed on the forums I want to watch. Thanks for the tip though. -- __ __ #_ < |\| |< _#