NNTP (usenet newsgroup) downloader for .NET

Question

I would like to try to download usenet newsgroup messages. Anybody know how? I'd take a look at IPWorks but I don't understand how to download it. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You pretty much just have to connect to it and then send NNTP commands and parse the results. Look at RFC3977 for information about NNTP.

If you search for "c# nntp" or similar in google you'll find plenty of samples.

This is assuming you only want to deal with text messages. If you want to deal with binaries it gets a bit more complicated and you probably have to look up yenc and similar.

Answer 2

You can download a trial version of the /n software IP*Works toolkit for .NET at this URL: http://www.nsoftware.com/download/download.aspx?part=IPN8-A&prod=demo&type=exe

The IP*Works V8 .NET Edition even comes with an example NNTP Reader client in their included demos. Below is some sample code:

String body = "";
Nntp nntp1 = new Nntp();
nntp1.OnTransfer += new NntpOnTransferHandler(delegate(object sender, NntpTransferEventArgs e) {
    body = e.Text;
});
nntp1.NewsServer = "some.server.com";
nntp1.User = "someuser";
nntp1.Password = "somepassword";
nntp1.Connect();
nntp1.CurrentGroup = "somegroup";
nntp1.CurrentArticle = "articlenumber";
nntp1.FetchArticle();
Console.WriteLine("Body: " + body);

This is a simple example, but the NNTPReader demo will give you a more complete example.