NAME

FEAR::API - There's no fear with this elegant site scraper

DESCRIPTION

FEAR::API is a tool that helps reduce your time creating site scraping scripts and help you do it in an much more elegant way. FEAR::API combines many strong and powerful features from various CPAN modules, such as LWP::UserAgent, WWW::Mechanize, Template::Extract, Encode, HTML::Parser, etc. and digests them into a deeper Zen.

More documentation will come sooooooner or later.

EXAMPLES

use FEAR::API -base;

Fetch a page and store it in a scalar

fetch("google.com") > my $content;

my $content = fetch("google.com")->document->as_string;

Fetch a page and print to STDOUT

 getprint("google.com");

 print fetch("google.com")->document->as_string;

 fetch("google.com");
 print $$_;    

 fetch("google.com") | _print;

Fetch a page and save it to a file

getstore("google.com");

url("google.com")->() | _save_as("google.html");

use IO::All;
fetch("google.com") | io('google.html');
url("google.com")->() >> _self;
&$_ while $_;
(url("google.com")->() >> _self) | _save_as_tree("./root");
$_->() | _save_as_tree("./root") while $_;

Recursively get web pages from Google

url("google.com")->() >> _self;
&$_ >> _self while $_;

Recursively get web pages from Google

(url("google.com")->() >> _self) | _save_as_tree("./root");
while($_){
  (&$_ | _save_as_tree("./root")) >> _self;
}
url("google.com")->()->follow_link(n => 2);
print Dumper fetch("google.com")->links;

Submit a query to Google

url("google.com")->();
submit_form(
            form_number => 1,
            fields => { q => "Kill Bush" }
            );
url("[% FOREACH i = ['a'..'z'] %]
     http://some.site/[% i %]
     [% END %]");
&$_ while $_;

Minimal

url("google.com")->()
  >> [
      qr(^http:) => _self,
      qr(google) => \my @l,
      qr(google) => sub {  print ">>>".$_->[0],$/ }
     ];
$_->() while $_;
print Dumper \@l;

Verbose

fetch("http://google.com")
->report_links(
               qr(^http:) => _self,
               qr(google) => \my @l,
               qr(google) => sub {  print ">>>".$_->[0],$/ }
              );
fetch while has_more_urls;
print Dumper \@l;

Minimal

url("google.com")->()
  >> {
      qr(^http:) => _self,
      qr(google) => \my @l,
      qr(google) => sub {  print ">>>".$_->[0],$/ }
     };
$_->() while $_;
print Dumper \@l;

Verbose

fetch("http://google.com")
->fallthrough_report(1)
->report_links(
               qr(^http:) => _self,
               qr(google) => \my @l,
               qr(google) => sub {  print ">>>".$_->[0],$/ }
              );
fetch while has_more_urls;
print Dumper \@l;

Extraction

Extract data from CPAN

url("http://search.cpan.org/recent")->();
submit_form(
        form_name => "f",
        fields => {
                   query => "perl"
                  });
template("<!--item-->[% p %]<!--end item-->");
extract;
print Dumper extresult;

Extract data from CPAN after some HTML cleanup

url("http://search.cpan.org/recent")->();
submit_form(
        form_name => "f",
        fields => {
                   query => "perl"
                  });
preproc(q(s/\A.+<!--results-->(.+)<!--end results-->.+\Z/$1/s));
print document->as_string;    # print content to STDOUT
template("<!--item-->[% p %]<!--end item-->");
extract;
print Dumper extresult;

HTML cleanup, extract data, and refine results

url("http://search.cpan.org/recent")->();
submit_form(
        form_name => "f",
        fields => {
                   query => "perl"
                  });
preproc(q(s/\A.+<!--results-->(.+)<!--end results-->.+\Z/$1/s));
print $$_;    # print content to STDOUT
template("<!--item-->[% rec %]<!--end item-->");
extract;
postproc(q($_->{rec} =~ s/<.+?>//g));     # Strip HTML tags
print Dumper extresult;

Use filtering syntax

fetch("http://search.cpan.org/recent");
submit_form(
            form_name => "f",
            fields => {
                       query => "perl"
            })
   | _doc_filter(q(s/\A.+<!--results-->(.+)<!--end results-->.+\Z/$1/s))
   | _template("<!--item-->[% rec %]<!--end item-->")
   | _result_filter(q($_->{rec} =~ s/<.+?>//g));
print Dumper \@$_;

Invoke handler for extracted results

fetch("http://search.cpan.org/recent");
submit_form(
            form_name => "f",
            fields => {
                       query => "perl"
            })
   | _doc_filter(q(s/\A.+<!--results-->(.+)<!--end results-->.+\Z/$1/s))
   | "<!--item-->[% rec %]<!--end item-->"
   | _result_filter(q($_->{rec} =~ s/<.+?>//g));
invoke_handler('Data::Dumper');

Preprocess document

url("google.com")->()
| _preproc(use => "html_to_null")
| _preproc(use => "decode_entities")
| _print;

Postprocess extraction results

fetch("http://search.cpan.org/recent");
submit_form(
            form_name => "f",
            fields => {
                       query => "perl"
            })
   | _doc_filter(q(s/\A.+<!--results-->(.+)<!--end results-->.+\Z/$1/s))
   | _template("<!--item-->[% rec %]<!--end item-->")
   | _result_filter(use => "html_to_null",    qw(rec));
   | _result_filter(use => "decode_entities", qw(rec))
print Dumper \@$_;

AUTHOR & COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2006 by Yung-chung Lin (a.k.a. xern) <xern@cpan.org>

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself