WWW::Search::Metapedia3pm

Usage

    require WWW::Search;
    $search = new WWW::Search('Metapedia');

Overview

http://www.savvysearch.com.

Silly class I made to sponge off a Encyclopedia meta search engine. Searches multi online Encyclopedias.

Covers:

Encylopedia Britannica - paid subscription service Encarta Knowledge Adventure Infoplease

This class exports no public interface; all interaction should be done through WWW::Search objects.

How does it work?

"native_setup_search" is called before we do anything. It initializes our private variables (which all begin with underscores) and sets up a URL to the first results page in "{_next_url}".

"native_retrieve_some" is called (from "WWW::Search::retrieve_some") whenever more hits are needed. It calls the LWP library to fetch the page specified by "{_next_url}". It parses this page, appending any search hits it finds to "{cache}". If it finds a ``next'' button in the text, it sets "{_next_url}" to point to the page for the next set of results, otherwise it sets it to undef to indicate we're done.