HTML::Summary - module for generating a summary from a web page.

    use HTML::Summary;
    use HTML::TreeBuilder;

    my $tree = new HTML::TreeBuilder;
    $tree->parse( $document );

    my $summarizer = new HTML::Summary(
        LENGTH      => 200,
        USE_META    => 1,
    );

    $summary = $summarizer->generate( $tree );
    $summarizer->option( 'USE_META' => 1 );
    $length = $summarizer->option( 'LENGTH' );
    if ( $summarizer->meta_used( ) )
    {
        do something
    }

The HTML::Summary module produces summaries from the textual content of web pages. It does so using the location heuristic, which determines the value of a given sentence based on its position and status within the document; for example, headings, section titles and opening paragraph sentences may be favoured over other textual content. A LENGTH option can be used to restrict the length of the summary produced.

Possible attributes are:

VERBOSE

Generate verbose messages to STDERR.

LENGTH

Maximum length of summary (in bytes). Default is 500.

USE_META

Flag to tell summarizer whether to use the content of the <META> tag in the page header, if one is present, instead of generating a summary from the body text. Note that if the USE_META flag is set, this overrides the LENGTH flag - in other words, the summary provided by the <META> tag is returned in full, even if it is greater than LENGTH bytes. Default is 0 (no).

    my $summarizer = new HTML::Summary LENGTH => 200;

Get / set HTML::Summary configuration options.

    my $length = $summarizer->option( 'LENGTH' );
    $summarizer->option( 'USE_META' => 1 );

Takes an HTML::Element object, and generates a summary from it.

    my $tree = new HTML::TreeBuilder;
    $tree->parse( $document );
    my $summary = $summarizer->generate( $tree );

Returns 1 if the META tag description was used to generate the summary.

    if ( $summarizer->meta_used() )
    {
        # do something ...
    }

    HTML::TreeBuilder
    Text::Sentence
    Lingua::JA::Jcode
    Lingua::JA::Jtruncate

    Ave Wrigley <wrigley@cre.canon.co.uk>
    Tony Rose <tgr@cre.canon.co.uk>
    Neil Bowers <neilb@cre.canon.co.uk>

Copyright (c) 1997 Canon Research Centre Europe (CRE). All rights reserved. This script and any associated documentation or files cannot be distributed outside of CRE without express prior permission from CRE.