NAME
WWW::Baidu - Perl interface for the www.baidu.com search engine
VERSION
This document describes version 0.06 of "WWW::Baidu", released Jan 21, 2007.
SYNOPSIS
use WWW::Baidu;
my $baidu = WWW::Baidu->new;
# ensure the keys are in the GBK/GB2312 encoding if they're Chinese
my $count = $baidu->search('Perl "Larry Wall"', 'Audrey');
$baidu->limit(200);
while (my $record = $baidu->next) {
# the results are in GBK/GB2312 encoding
print $record->title, "\n",
$record->url, "\n",
$record->summary, "\n",
$record->date, "\n",
$record->size, "\n",
$record->cached_url, "\n\n\n";
}
DESCRIPTION
Baidu.com is a very popular Chinese search engine which does similar things as Google. This module provides you with a Perl interface to that site.
METHODS
"$obj = WWW::Baidu->new()"
"$obj = WWW::Baidu->new( cache => $cache )"
This is the constructor for "WWW::Baidu". It accepts an optional
argument which will must be a Cache::Cache-compatible object.
"WWW::Baidu" will use this cache instead of a default
"Cache::FileCache" instance.
"$count = $obj->search($key1, $key2, ...)"
Searches Baidu by the given keys and returns the total records
reported by Baidu. Note that the return value $count is only an
estimation by Baidu. Usually it's not equal to the total number of
records that you can fetch by the "next" method.
It's highly recommended to pass only string keys in the GBK or
GB2312 encoding.
A call of this method will clear the internal search results' buffer
and the iterator counter, but the "limit" setting is left intact.
"$obj->limit($count)"
Limits the total number of records WWW::Baidu will try to offer.
This method will affect the "next()" method. And the internal
counter will also get cleared if the "search" method is called
again.
"$record = $obj->next()"
Returns the next search result which is a WWW::Baidu::Record object.
"WWW::Baidu" accesses the baidu.com site rather lazily. That is, it
only "clicks" the "Next page" link in case that the user has fetched
all the records in the internal buffer.
When there's no more records (due to the capability of Baidu itself
or the upper-limit set via the "limit" method), this method will
return undef.
CACHING
"WWW::Baidu" uses WWW::Mechanize::Cached internally so that your program will run much faster during debugging and will also behave more politely to the Baidu.com site.
CAVEAT
It's not a bug in WWW::Baidu.
During debugging, it's highly recommended to fix your search keys fed into the "search" method, so that "WWW::Baidu" can take advantage of the caching facility and your scripts will also run swiftly without the pain of accessing the web.
Please don't punish others' sites for your own programming mistakes. :)
CODE COVERAGE
I use Devel::Cover to test the code coverage of my tests, below is the Devel::Cover report on this module test suite.
File stmt bran cond sub pod time total
---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
blib/lib/WWW/Baidu.pm 98.1 84.6 66.7 100.0 100.0 100.0 93.9
blib/lib/WWW/Baidu/Record.pm 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 n/a 0.0 100.0
Total 98.2 84.6 66.7 100.0 100.0 100.0 94.3
---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
SOURCE CONTROL
You can always get the latest source code from the following Subversion
<https://svn.openfoundry.org/wwwbaidu>
It has anonymous access to all.
If you like to get a commit bit, please let me know. I've been trying to follow Audrey's best practices. ;)
AUTHOR
Agent Zhang <agentzh@gmail.com>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2007 by Agent Zhang. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
WWW::Baidu::Record, <http://www.baidu.com>, WWW::Mechanize::Cached.