Creating a Custom Parser

Introduction

Parsers allow Owl to extract data from a variety of message boards and display these data in a unified interface. Version 1.0 of Owl is released with a Lua Parser for vBulletin 3.x. Future version of Owl will have parsers for vBulletin 4.x and phpBB 3.x. Developers can write parsers for a specific message board system that can then be used with Owl.

The main goal of this document is to explain the process of writing a parser for Owl (version 1.0) and the requirements that each parser must meet in order to work properly.

Requirements

This article assumes the reader is familiar with Lua and HTML. A basic knowledge of server/client design and using regular expressions would also be helpful.