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App-WebSearchUtils-0.001
River stage one • 1 direct dependent • 1 total dependent
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/ App::WebSearchUtils

NAME

App::WebSearchUtils - CLI utilites related to searching with search engines

VERSION

This document describes version 0.001 of App::WebSearchUtils (from Perl distribution App-WebSearchUtils), released on 2022-10-10.

SYNOPSIS

This distribution provides the following utilities:

FUNCTIONS

Usage:

 web_search(%args) -> [$status_code, $reason, $payload, \%result_meta]

Open web search page in browser.

This utility can save you time when you want to open multiple queries (with added common prefix/suffix words) or specify some options like time limit. It will formulate the search URL(s) then open them for you in browser. You can also specify to print out the URLs instead.

Aside from standard web search, you can also generate/open other searches like image, video, news, or map.

This function is not exported.

Arguments ('*' denotes required arguments):

  • action => str (default: "open_url")

    What to do with the URLs.

    Instead of opening the queries in browser (open_url), you can also do other action instead.

    Printing search URLs: print_url will print the search URL. print_html_link will print the HTML link (the <a> tag). And print_org_link will print the Org-mode link, e.g. [[url...][query]].

    Saving search result HTMLs: save_html will first visit each search URL (currently using Firefox::Marionette) then save each result page to a file named <num>-<query>.html in the current directory. Existing files will not be overwritten; the utility will save to *.html.1, *.html.2 and so on instead.

    Extracting search result links: print_result_link will first will first visit each search URL (currently using Firefox::Marionette) then extract result links and print them. print_result_html_link and print_result_org_link are similar but will instead format each link as HTML and Org link, respectively.

    The print_result_*link actions are not very useful for some search engines like Google because result HTML page is obfuscated. Thus we can only extract all links in each page instead of selecting (via DOM) only the actual search result entry links, etc.

    If you want to filter the links further by domain, path, etc. you can use grep-url.

  • append => str

    String to add at the end of each query.

  • delay => duration

    Delay between opening each query.

    As an alternative to the --delay option, you can also use --min-delay and --max-delay to set a random delay between a minimum and maximum value.

  • engine => str (default: "google")

    Search engine to use.

  • max_delay => duration

    Delay between opening each query.

  • min_delay => duration

    Delay between opening each query.

    As an alternative to the --mindelay and --max-delay options, you can also use --delay to set a constant delay between requests.

  • num => posint

    Number of results per page.

  • prepend => str

    String to add at the beginning of each query.

  • queries => array[str]

  • queries_from => filename

    Supply queries from lines of text file (specify "-" for stdin).

  • time_end => date

  • time_past => str

    Limit time period to the past hour/24hour/week/month/year.

  • time_start => date

Returns an enveloped result (an array).

First element ($status_code) is an integer containing HTTP-like status code (200 means OK, 4xx caller error, 5xx function error). Second element ($reason) is a string containing error message, or something like "OK" if status is 200. Third element ($payload) is the actual result, but usually not present when enveloped result is an error response ($status_code is not 2xx). Fourth element (%result_meta) is called result metadata and is optional, a hash that contains extra information, much like how HTTP response headers provide additional metadata.

Return value: (any)

HOMEPAGE

Please visit the project's homepage at https://metacpan.org/release/App-WebSearchUtils.

SOURCE

Source repository is at https://github.com/perlancar/perl-App-WebSearchUtils.

SEE ALSO

App::GoogleSearchUtils - previous incarnation.

App::FirefoxMultiAccountContainersUtils.

AUTHOR

perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>

CONTRIBUTING

To contribute, you can send patches by email/via RT, or send pull requests on GitHub.

Most of the time, you don't need to build the distribution yourself. You can simply modify the code, then test via:

 % prove -l

If you want to build the distribution (e.g. to try to install it locally on your system), you can install Dist::Zilla, Dist::Zilla::PluginBundle::Author::PERLANCAR, Pod::Weaver::PluginBundle::Author::PERLANCAR, and sometimes one or two other Dist::Zilla- and/or Pod::Weaver plugins. Any additional steps required beyond that are considered a bug and can be reported to me.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2022 by perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=App-WebSearchUtils

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.