Amazon.com
Perl & LWP sets out to unwrap the Library for the Web in Perl (LWP), which is a collection of modules that make it easier to access and pick apart Web pages (and FTP-accessible files, and outgoing e-mail messages) from within your Perl programs. The book succeeds wonderfully, not only in conveying the technical aspects of LWP programming, but in making clear the fun of doing work that's very well suited to Perl. Sean Burke assumes that his readers know something about Perl, albeit not much, and a similar amount about HTML. He does a great job of explaining how LWP functions fit into Perl programs, and how you can use them to make reference to Internet resources far more easily than before.
Burke's narrative takes the form of a guided tour in which he introduces his readers to aspects of the LWP modules one by one. His tone is generally straightforward (sharp commentary alternates with brief code listings, with occasional passages of reference material), but there's sometimes an undercurrent of exuberance that makes the reader want to get going with his or her own programming right away. Overall, the emphasis is on teaching both LWP and Perl itself to the extent necessary to do LWP work. Because of the concise and nicely indexed code modules, though, you'll find this book useful as a reference after you're under way with LWP. --David Wall
Topics covered: How to program with LWP and Perl itself. All of LWP's strong points--including HTML parsing (with tokens and trees as well as with regular expressions), HTML generation and modification, manipulation of HTML forms, and the operation of spiders--are covered. This book has more of a tutorial tone than any similar reference material on the Internet.
Book Description
With the LWP (Library for WWW in Perl) suite of modules, your programs can download and extract information from the Web. Written by a contributor to LWP, and with a foreword by one of LWP's creators, Perl & LWP is the authoritative guide to using this powerful and popular toolkit.You'll learn how to navigate the Web with LWP, fetching web pages, submitting forms, managing cookies, and accessing authenticated web sites. The book also demonstrates using three different techniques, regular expressions, tokens, and tress, to extract information from HTML. The many detailed case studies show you how to apply this knowledge to real world situations, from downloading news stories to e-commerce. Perl & LWP is a must have for Perl programmers who want to automate and mine the Web.
Book Info
Shows how to make web requests, submit forms, and even provide authentication information and demonstrates using trees to parse HTML. For Perl programmers who want to automate. Softcover.
Home
