WWW::NameGen - A website polling random name generator

This module polls an online name generator for x many random names, caches internally and returns the results.

  use WWW::NameGen;
  my $namegen = WWW::NameGen->new();
  my @names = $namegen->generate(min => 30);
  @morenames = $namegen->generate(min => 350);
  @evenmorenames = $namegen->generate(min => 350); # returns cached results as above

You are probably thinking to yourself right now something like this:

  Why did he decided to get the list from a website instead of doing internal
  an internal sort of thing?

There are a few reasons:

I'm lazy

I'm lazy and it was a quick hack for something more important than a random name generator.

name lists are big

I could of included the US Census data and done an internal sort and what-not but the data is over a meg and I don't want to deal with it.

someone else already did it

There are already a half dozen (more maybe?) modules that do all sorts of random word stuff from dictionaries and lists. This website has also already created a clean and simple random name generator. There is no point in me rewriting stuff that has already been done. See point "I'm lazy" for more information.

Creates and returns a new WWW::NameGen object.

Performs the post request to get a random name list.

This can take several arguments.

min

The 'min' value is the minimum count of random names to fetch.

obscurity

The 'obscurity' value is the obscurity of the names to fetch.

type

The 'type' argument is either 1, 2 or 3. One for only males, Two for only females, or Three for both males and females.

nocache

When the 'nocache' arg is set is will tell the generate function to ignore the cache and create a new set of names.

Takes a count breaks it into chunks of x.

Nick Gerakines, <nick at socklabs.com>

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-www-namegen at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=WWW-NameGen. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

    perldoc WWW::NameGen

You can also look for information at:

* AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation

http://annocpan.org/dist/WWW-NameGen

* CPAN Ratings

http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/WWW-NameGen

* RT: CPAN's request tracker

http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=WWW-NameGen

* Search CPAN

http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-NameGen

Thanks to whoever runs and owns http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm for providing the service that this module calls.

And please, don't waste his bandwidth or be generally rude. Respect the site so that it will stay up.

Copyright 2006 Nick Gerakines, all rights reserved.

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