This suite of packages [ HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL ] provide basic functionality of an 'abstract browser'. The idea is that that abstract browser is only capable to load objects (pages) via HTTP, FTP, ..., but itself has no other functionality.
It is the tasks of particular plugins to add more specific functionality, such as 'Link Checking' or 'Spidering' or 'Having headers like Firefox'.
To make that happen, the abstract browser exposes the phases of a request to allow plugins (aka modules) to intercept when they feel the need. [ If you understand Apache's module concept then you immediately get the idea. ]
To make things interesting, and to allow the agent to be run in reactive environments, it is written based on POE (Perl Object Environment, or similar). The good side of this is, that your application is not necessarily blocked when fetching documents off the network. The downside is that programming is a bit more, well, interesting.
Apart from the abstract browser itself
WWW::Agent
and some plugins in the
WWW::Agent::Plugins::*
namespace.....
### NOT YET INCLUDED !!!
###
###, this package also provides the following off-the-shelf scripts
###
### analyze --help
###
### This program spiders through a web site and collects analytical ### and statistical information.
Nothing CPAN would not handle by itself. If you are not using CPAN, then plz consult the Makefile.PL for an up-to-date list.
To install this module type the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
NOTE: At this stage I make use of a particular server on the network. If you have no network, then some tests may fail.
Copyright (C) 2005 by Robert Barta
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.4 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.