NAME¶
WWW::Wikipedia - Automated interface to the Wikipedia
SYNOPSIS¶
use WWW::Wikipedia;
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();
## search for 'perl'
my $result = $wiki->search( 'perl' );
## if the entry has some text print it out
if ( $result->text() ) {
print $result->text();
}
## list any related items we can look up
print join( "\n", $result->related() );
DESCRIPTION¶
WWW::Wikipedia provides an automated interface to the Wikipedia
<
http://www.wikipedia.org>, which is a free, collaborative, online
encyclopedia. This module allows you to search for a topic and return the
resulting entry. It also gives you access to related topics which are also
available via the Wikipedia for that entry.
INSTALLATION¶
To install this module type the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
METHODS¶
new()¶
The constructor. You can pass it a two letter language code, or nothing to let
it default to 'en'.
## Default: English
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();
## use the French wiki instead
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new( language => 'fr' );
WWW::Wikipedia is a subclass of LWP::UserAgent. If you would like to have more
control over the user agent (control timeouts, proxies ...) you have full
access.
## set HTTP request timeout
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();
$wiki->timeout( 2 );
You can turn off the following of wikipedia redirect directives by passing a
false value to "follow_redirects".
language()¶
This allows you to get and set the language you want to use. Two letter language
codes should be used. The default is 'en'.
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new( language => 'es' );
# Later on...
$wiki->language( 'fr' );
follow_redirects()¶
By default, wikipeda redirect directives are followed. Set this to false to turn
that off.
search()¶
Which performs the search and returns a WWW::Wikipedia::Entry object which you
can query further. See WWW::Wikipedia::Entry docs for more info.
$entry = $wiki->search( 'Perl' );
print $entry->text();
If there's a problem connecting to Wikipedia, "undef" will be returned
and the error message will be stored in "error()".
random()¶
This method fetches a random wikipedia page.
error()¶
This is a generic error accessor/mutator. You can retrieve any searching error
messages here.
TODO¶
- •
- Clean up results. Strip HTML.
- •
- Watch the development of Special:Export XML formatting, eg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/perl
SEE ALSO¶
- •
- LWP::UserAgent
AUTHORS¶
Ed Summers <ehs@pobox.com>
Brian Cassidy <bricas@cpan.org>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE¶
Copyright 2003-2011 by Ed Summers
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.