11.8.1 NNTP Objects
NNTP instances have the following methods. The response that is
returned as the first item in the return tuple of almost all methods
is the server's response: a string beginning with a three-digit code.
If the server's response indicates an error, the method raises one of
the above exceptions.
- getwelcome ()
-
Return the welcome message sent by the server in reply to the initial
connection. (This message sometimes contains disclaimers or help
information that may be relevant to the user.)
- set_debuglevel (level)
-
Set the instance's debugging level. This controls the amount of
debugging output printed. The default, 0, produces no debugging
output. A value of 1 produces a moderate amount of debugging
output, generally a single line per request or response. A value of
2 or higher produces the maximum amount of debugging output,
logging each line sent and received on the connection (including
message text).
- newgroups (date, time)
-
Send a "NEWGROUPS" command. The date argument should be a
string of the form "yymmdd" indicating the
date, and time should be a string of the form
"hhmmss" indicating the time. Return a pair
(response, groups) where groups is a list of
group names that are new since the given date and time.
- newnews (group, date, time)
-
Send a "NEWNEWS" command. Here, group is a group name or
'*', and date and time have the same meaning as for
newgroups(). Return a pair (response,
articles) where articles is a list of article ids.
- list ()
-
Send a "LIST" command. Return a pair (response,
list) where list is a list of tuples. Each tuple has the
form (group, last, first, flag), where
group is a group name, last and first are the last
and first article numbers (as strings), and flag is 'y'
if posting is allowed, 'n' if not, and 'm' if the
newsgroup is moderated. (Note the ordering: last, first.)
- group (name)
-
Send a "GROUP" command, where name is the group name.
Return a tuple (response, count,
first, last, name) where
count is the (estimated) number of articles in the group,
first is the first article number in the group, last is
the last article number in the group, and name is the group
name. The numbers are returned as strings.
- help ()
-
Send a "HELP" command. Return a pair (response,
list) where list is a list of help strings.
- stat (id)
-
Send a "STAT" command, where id is the message id (enclosed
in "<" and ">") or an article number (as a string).
Return a triple (response, number, id) where
number is the article number (as a string) and id is the
article id (enclosed in "<" and ">").
- next ()
-
Send a "NEXT" command. Return as for stat().
- last ()
-
Send a "LAST" command. Return as for stat().
- head (id)
-
Send a "HEAD" command, where id has the same meaning as for
stat(). Return a tuple
(response, number, id, list)
where the first three are the same as for stat(),
and list is a list of the article's headers (an uninterpreted
list of lines, without trailing newlines).
- body (id)
-
Send a "BODY" command, where id has the same meaning as for
stat(). Return as for head().
- article (id)
-
Send a "ARTICLE" command, where id has the same meaning as
for stat(). Return as for head().
- slave ()
-
Send a "SLAVE" command. Return the server's response.
- xhdr (header, string)
-
Send an "XHDR" command. This command is not defined in the RFC
but is a common extension. The header argument is a header
keyword, e.g. 'subject'. The string argument should have
the form "first-last" where first and
last are the first and last article numbers to search. Return a
pair (response, list), where list is a list of
pairs (id, text), where id is an article id
(as a string) and text is the text of the requested header for
that article.
- post (file)
-
Post an article using the "POST" command. The file
argument is an open file object which is read until EOF using its
readline() method. It should be a well-formed news article,
including the required headers. The post() method
automatically escapes lines beginning with ".".
- ihave (id, file)
-
Send an "IHAVE" command. If the response is not an error, treat
file exactly as for the post() method.
- date ()
-
Return a triple (response, date, time),
containing the current date and time in a form suitable for the
newnews() and newgroups() methods.
This is an optional NNTP extension, and may not be supported by all
servers.
- xgtitle (name)
-
Process an "XGTITLE" command, returning a pair (response,
list), where list is a list of tuples containing
(name, title).
This is an optional NNTP extension, and may not be supported by all
servers.
- xover (start, end)
-
Return a pair (resp, list). list is a list
of tuples, one for each article in the range delimited by the start
and end article numbers. Each tuple is of the form
(article number, subject,
poster, date, id,
references, size, lines).
This is an optional NNTP extension, and may not be supported by all
servers.
- xpath (id)
-
Return a pair (resp, path), where path is the
directory path to the article with message ID id. This is an
optional NNTP extension, and may not be supported by all servers.
- quit ()
-
Send a "QUIT" command and close the connection. Once this method
has been called, no other methods of the NNTP object should be called.
