WWW::Search::DrugBank

This is a screen scraper for querying the University of Alberta's DrugBank database.

It uses the L<WWW::Search> interface to provide information about pharmaceuticals:

use WWW::Search;

my $search = new WWW::Search('DrugBank');

my @ids = qw/ APRD00109 APRD00189 APRD00849 /; $search->native_query( \@ids );

while( my $drug = $search->next_result ) { printf "Generic name: %s\n", $drug->{generic_name}; printf "Melting point: %s\n", $drug->{melting_point}; printf "CAS registry number: %s\n", $drug->{cas_registry_number}; printf "PubChem compound ID: %s\n", $drug->{pubchem_id}->{compound}; printf "PubChem substance ID: %s\n", $drug->{pubchem_id}->{substance}; print "\n";
# ... etc.
}

PREREQUISITES

• WWW::Search
• Test::More
• XML::LibXML
• HTML::TreeBuilder
• HTML::Entities
• URI

Currently, parsing DrugBank cards relies on XML::LibXML, which requires libxml2 (L<http://xmlsoft.org>). I would have used the pure-Perl XML::XPath module had it not been so excruciatingly slow.

INSTALLATION

To install this module, run the following commands:

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION

After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc WWW::Search::DrugBank

You can also look for information at:

Search CPAN

http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-Search-DrugBank

CPAN Request Tracker:

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

AnnoCPAN, annotated CPAN documentation:

http://annocpan.org/dist/WWW-Search-DrugBank

CPAN Ratings:

http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/WWW-Search-DrugBank

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2008 David Iberri

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