SYNOPSIS

require WWW::Search;
require WWW::SearchResult;
$search = new WWW::Search;
$search->native_query(WWW::Search::escape_query($query));
# Get first result:
$result = $search->next_result();

DESCRIPTION

A framework for returning the results of "WWW::Search".

REQUIRED RESULTS

The particular fields returned in a result are backend- (search engine-) dependent. However, all search engines are required to return a url and title. (This list may grow in the future.)

METHODS AND FUNCTIONS

new

To create a new WWW::SearchResult, call

    $result = new WWW::SearchResult();

url

Returns the primary URL. Note that there may be a list of urls, see also methods "urls" and "add_url". Nothing special is guaranteed about the primary URL other than that it is the first one returned by the back end.

Every result is required to have at least one URL.

add_url

Add a URL to the list.

urls

Return a reference to the list of urls. There is also a primary URL ("url").

add_related_url

Add a URL to the related_url list.

related_urls

Return a reference to the list of related urls.

add_related_title

Add a title to the list or related titles.

related_titles

Return a reference to the list of related titles.

title, description, score, change_date, index_date, size, raw

Set or get attributes of the result.

None of these attributes is guaranteed to be provided by a given backend. If an attribute is not provided its method will return "undef".

Typical contents of these attributes:

title

The title of the hit result (typically that provided by the 'TITLE' HTML tag).

description

A brief description of the result, as provided (or not) by the search engine. Often the first few sentences of the document.

source

Source is either the base url for this result (as listed on the search engine's results page) or another copy of the full url path of the result. It might also indicate the source site name or address whence the result came, for example, 'CNN' or 'http://www.cnn.com' if the search result page said ``found at CNN.com''.

This value is backend-specific; in fact very few backends set this value.

add_sources

Same meaning as source above, for adding sources in case there are potentially multiple sources.

sources

Returns a reference to the list of sources.

score

A backend specific, numeric score of the search result. The exact range of scores is search-engine specific. Usually larger scores are better, but this is no longer required. See normalized_score for a backend independent score.

normalized_score

This is intended to be a backend-independent score of the search result. The range of this score is between 0 and 1000. Higher values indicate better quality results.

This is not really implemented since no one has created an backend-independent ranking algorithm.

change_date

When the result was last changed. Typically this is the modification time of the destination web page.

index_date

When the search engine indexed the result.

size

The approximate size of the result, in bytes. This is only an approximation because search backends often report the size as ``18.4K''; the best we can do with that number is return it as the value of 18.4 * 1024.

raw

The raw HTML for the entire result. Raw should be exactly the raw HTML for one entry. It should not include list or table setup commands (like ul or table tags), but it may include list item or table data commands (like li, tr, or td). Whether raw contains a list entry, table row, br-separated lines, or plain text is search-engine dependent. In fact, many backends do not even return it at all.

as_HTML

Convert the search result to a human-readable form, decorated with HTML for pretty-printing.

Others

More attributes of the result. Backend-specific. Refer to the documentation of each backend for details.

bid_amount

bid_count

bidder

category

company

end_date

image_url

item_number

location

question_count

seller

shipping

sold

start_date

thumb_url

watcher_count

AUTHOR

WWW::SearchResult was written by John Heidemann. WWW::SearchResult is maintained by Martin Thurn.