WWW::Search and AutoSearch and WebSearch ======================================== WHAT IS NEW IN WWW::Search 2.04? (1999-09-30) ---------------------------------------------- overview: * Bug fixes for several backends (as usual) * NEW backends: GoTo, Deja, NetFind, Lycos::Sites, Lycos::Pages * WebSearch has new/changed options: --count, --debug, --lwpdebug See the file ChangeLog for details. WHAT IS WWW::Search? -------------------- WWW::Search is a collection of Perl modules which provide an API to WWW (and similar) search engines. Currently WWW::Search includes back-ends for variations of AltaVista, Dejanews, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Magellan, WebCrawler, and Yahoo, among others. We include two applications built from this library: AutoSearch (a program to automate tracking of search results over time), and WebSearch, a small demonstration program to drive the library. WWW::Search does NOT try to emulate the search that you would get with each search engine's GUI. WWW::Search performs the search in a way that is efficient and convenient for text processing. This might include getting "text-only" pages, making sure descriptions are turned on, and increasing the number of hits per page, among other tricks. Because WWW::Search depends on parsing the HTML output of web search engines it will fail if the search engine operators change their format (an unfortunately frequent occurrence). WWW::Search includes a test suite for most back-ends which verifies that it is functioning correctly. As of the day of the release the current back-end status is: AltaVista working AltaVista::AdvancedNews working AltaVista::AdvancedWeb working AltaVista::News working AltaVista::Web working AltaVista::Intranet working Crawler partially working? Deja/Dejanews working Excite working Excite::News working ExciteForWebServers not working Fireball not working? FolioViews working Google working Gopher not working? (not in test suite) GoTo working HotBot working HotFiles working Infoseek working Infoseek::Companies working Infoseek::Email not working Infoseek::News working Infoseek::Web working Livelink not working? (not in test suite) LookSmart working? (not in test suite) Lycos working Lycos::Pages working Lycos::Sites working Magellan working Metacrawler not working Metapedia working? (not in test suite) MSIndexServer not working? NetFind working NorthernLight working Null working OpenDirectory working PLweb not working Profusion working Search97 not working SFgate working Simple not working? (not in test suite) Snap working Verity not working (not in test suite) WebCrawler working Yahoo working ZDNet working ``Partially working'' indicates that some tests passed and some failed. WHAT IS AutoSearch? ------------------- WWW::Search's primary client is AutoSearch. AutoSearch performs a web-based search and puts the results set in a web page. It periodically updates this web page, indicating how the search changes over time. Sample output from AutoSearch can be found at . Output format is configurable. See the man page for AutoSearch details, or the DEMONSTRATION section below for quick-start instructions. REQUIREMENTS ------------ WWW::Search requires Perl5, the libwww-perl module suite, the URI module, and the HTML::Parser module. Some of the "not working" modules require the HTML::TreeBuilder module (so you can ignore warnings about TreeBuilder during the build). For information on Perl5, see . For all the modules, see to find a CPAN site near you. At the time of this release, the primary WWW::Search development and testing is under perl version 5.005_03 on Sun UltraSparc Solaris 7 and under ActiveState perl build 519 on Windows NT 4.0 with service pack 5. WWW::Search has also been built and tested successfully on Win98J (that's Japanese) with ActiveState perl build 517. If you have successfully built and tested WWW::Search on any other (obscure) platform / version combination, please let me know! MartinThurn@iname.com AVAILABILITY ------------ The latest version of WWW::Search should always be available on CPAN. Here is the best URL for finding it: http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/modules/by-module/WWW INSTALLATION ------------ In order to use this package you will need Perl version 5.002 or better. It is hightly recommended that you use CPAN.pm to install WWW::Search. It will automatically install all the prerequisite modules and put everything in the right places. On a unix system, just type perl -MCPAN -e 'install WWW::Search'. Otherwise, you can install WWW::Search as you would any perl module library, by running these commands in the WWW-Search-2.04 directory after unpacking the archive (and after installing all the prerequisite modules): perl Makefile.PL make make test make install On Win32, maintenance and testing is done with Microsoft's nmake.exe; use 'nmake' instead of 'make' in the above sequence of commands. See "TESTING" below for a description of what "make test" does. If you want to install a private copy of WWW::Search in your home directory, then you should produce the initial Makefile with something like this command: perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/my/perl/lib Don't forget to add /my/perl/lib to your PERL5LIB environment variable (or 'use lib' it, or unshift it onto @INC)! TESTING ------- The "make test" command compares expected output from WWW::Search with actual output. It detects two kinds of errors: - internal parsing: First it checks to make sure that your system computes the same results as my system based on some saved Web queries. This test should always pass for working backends; if it doesn't, send me mail. - external queries: Second, it makes real queries against the search engines and compares them with some saved results. External queries can fail for several reasons: - new pages have been added which match the test queries, or matching pages have been deleted, causing the page count to go too far out of whack from the expected number (not necessarily a bad thing) - changes in the web search engine output which break WWW::Search's parsers, usually resulting in no URLs being returned (a bad thing) If the external tests fail, please either investigate the error or send a description of the problem, a list of your operating system and all relevant perl version number, and the output of "make test" to the maintainer of the back-end for the search engine that fails. DISCUSSION, BUG REPORTS, AND IMPROVEMENTS ----------------------------------------- Feedback about WWW::Search is encouraged. If you're using it for a neat application, please let us know. If you'd like to (or have) implemented a new back-end for WWW::Search, let us know so we don't duplicate work. Feedback, bug reports, fixes, and new back-ends should be sent to Martin Thurn . When sending e-mail, please please put [WWW::Search] at the beginning of the subject line (or risk me losing the message in the pile). There is a mailing list for WWW::Search discussion. To subscribe, send "subscribe info-www-search" as the body of a message to . Back-end-related bug reports ("search engine ABC doesn't work") should be sent to the author of the back-end (back-end authors are identified in the corresponding man page and in the output of ``make test''). General bugs should be reported to . When submitting a bug report, please remember to include - your operating system name and version - your version of perl - your version of WWW::Search - your version of the backend - the code you ran to produce the error (PLEASE cut-and-paste!) - sample output showing the error (PLEASE cut-and-paste!) DEMONSTRATION ------------- After installing the distribution, try: WebSearch '"Your Name Here"' or, if you are on Win32: WebSearch "\"Your Name Here\"" to see who's talking about you on the web. Then (in your web page directory), try: cd /path/to/your/web/pages AutoSearch -n me_on_the_web -s '"Your Name Here"' me or, if you are on Win32: cd /path/to/your/web/pages AutoSearch -n me_on_the_web -s "\"Your Name Here\"" me and the web page /path/to/your/web/pages/me/index.html will be created summarizing this information. If you are on UNIX you can add 0 3 * * 1 AutoSearch /path/to/your/web/pages/me to your crontab to update this search every week at 3:00 Monday morning, for example. DOCUMENTATION ------------- See `perldoc WWW::Search` after installation for an overview of the library. POD-style documentation is also included in all modules and scripts, so you can do `perldoc WebSearch` and `perldoc AutoSearch` and `perldoc WWW::Search::HotBot` after installation. FUTURE PLANS ------------ Some ideas: - a global option that will force WWW::Search to perform the same search as the engine's web GUI (I'm looking for contributions of the precise arguments that will produce such a search for each engine; i.e. the hash that should be passed as the second argument to native_query). Contact - application-level proxy support (I'm looking for a contribution here from someone who uses/needs proxy support and can test it). Contact - use LWP::ParallelUA to speed up multiple backend search requests (I'm trying to decide what the API interface will look like; please send suggestions). Contact - more widespread use of new result tags across all back-ends (i.e. description, date, size, etc.) - a freeze/restore interface to suspend and resume in-progress queries - more back-ends Contributions are always welcome. Send me e-mail if you plan a new back-end and to discuss architectural changes (to avoid duplicating work). Contact SUPPORT AND CREDITS ------------------- The WWW::Search architecture is by John Heidemann with feedback from the other contributors. NOTE: This list is no longer updated; consult the on-line documentation and/or the output of `make test` to find out who is currently maintaining each component. PLATFORM SUPPORT: Unix John Heidemann Windows Jim Smyser (see ) APPLICATIONS: WebSearch John Heidemann AutoSearch William Scheding BACK-ENDS: AltaVista John Heidemann Dejanews Cesare Feroldi de Rosa and Martin Thurn Crawler Andreas Borchert Excite GLen Pringle and Martin Thurn ExciteForWebServers Paul Lindner Fireball Andreas Borchert FolioViews Paul Lindner Gopher Paul Lindner HotBot William Scheding and Martin Thurn HotFiles Jim Smyser Infoseek Cesare Feroldi de Rosa and Martin Thurn Livelink Paul Lindner Lycos William Scheding and John Heidemann, Martin Thurn Magellan Martin Thurn MSIndexServer Paul Lindner NorthernLight Jim Smyser Null Paul Lindner OpenDirectory Jim Smyser PLWeb Paul Lindner Profusion Jim Smyser Search97 Paul Lindner SFgate Paul Lindner Simple Paul Lindner Snap Jim Smyser Verity Paul Lindner WebCrawler Martin Thurn Yahoo William Scheding and Martin Thurn ZDNet Jim Smyser AutoSearch is based on an earlier implementation by Kedar Jog with advice from Joe Touch . Bugs and extensions (to the software and documentation) have been identified by William Scheding , T. V. Raman (proxy support), C. Feroldi , Larry Virden , Paul Lindner , Guy Decoux , R Chandrasekar (Mickey) , Martin Thurn , Chris Nandor , Martin Valldeby , Jim Smyser , Darren Stalder , Neil Bowers , Ave Wrigley , Andreas Borchert , Jim Smyser . Bugs have reported by Joseph McDonald , Juan Jose Amor , Bowen Dwelle , Vassilis Papadimos , Vidyut Luther , Chris P. Acantilado . COPYRIGHT --------- Copyright (c) 1996 University of Southern California. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by the University of Southern California, Information Sciences Institute. The name of the University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Portions of this README are derived from the README for libwww-perl.