Provided by: libweb-scraper-perl_0.38-1_all 
NAME
Web::Scraper - Web Scraping Toolkit using HTML and CSS Selectors or XPath expressions
SYNOPSIS
use URI;
use Web::Scraper;
use Encode;
# First, create your scraper block
my $authors = scraper {
# Parse all TDs inside 'table[width="100%]"', store them into
# an array 'authors'. We embed other scrapers for each TD.
process 'table[width="100%"] td', "authors[]" => scraper {
# And, in each TD,
# get the URI of "a" element
process "a", uri => '@href';
# get text inside "small" element
process "small", fullname => 'TEXT';
};
};
my $res = $authors->scrape( URI->new("http://search.cpan.org/author/?A") );
# iterate the array 'authors'
for my $author (@{$res->{authors}}) {
# output is like:
# Andy Adler http://search.cpan.org/~aadler/
# Aaron K Dancygier http://search.cpan.org/~aakd/
# Aamer Akhter http://search.cpan.org/~aakhter/
print Encode::encode("utf8", "$author->{fullname}\t$author->{uri}\n");
}
The structure would resemble this (visually)
{
authors => [
{ fullname => $fullname, link => $uri },
{ fullname => $fullname, link => $uri },
]
}
DESCRIPTION
Web::Scraper is a web scraper toolkit, inspired by Ruby's equivalent Scrapi. It provides a
DSL-ish interface for traversing HTML documents and returning a neatly arranged Perl data
structure.
The scraper and process blocks provide a method to define what segments of a document to
extract. It understands HTML and CSS Selectors as well as XPath expressions.
METHODS
scraper
$scraper = scraper { ... };
Creates a new Web::Scraper object by wrapping the DSL code that will be fired when scrape
method is called.
scrape
$res = $scraper->scrape(URI->new($uri));
$res = $scraper->scrape($html_content);
$res = $scraper->scrape(\$html_content);
$res = $scraper->scrape($http_response);
$res = $scraper->scrape($html_element);
Retrieves the HTML from URI, HTTP::Response, HTML::Tree or text strings and creates a DOM
object, then fires the callback scraper code to retrieve the data structure.
If you pass URI or HTTP::Response object, Web::Scraper will automatically guesses the
encoding of the content by looking at Content-Type headers and META tags. Otherwise you
need to decode the HTML to Unicode before passing it to scrape method.
You can optionally pass the base URL when you pass the HTML content as a string instead of
URI or HTTP::Response.
$res = $scraper->scrape($html_content, "http://example.com/foo");
This way Web::Scraper can resolve the relative links found in the document.
process
scraper {
process "tag.class", key => 'TEXT';
process '//tag[contains(@foo, "bar")]', key2 => '@attr';
process '//comment()', 'comments[]' => 'TEXT';
};
process is the method to find matching elements from HTML with CSS selector or XPath
expression, then extract text or attributes into the result stash.
If the first argument begins with "//" or "id(" it's treated as an XPath expression and
otherwise CSS selector.
# <span class="date">2008/12/21</span>
# date => "2008/12/21"
process ".date", date => 'TEXT';
# <div class="body"><a href="http://example.com/">foo</a></div>
# link => URI->new("http://example.com/")
process ".body > a", link => '@href';
# <div class="body"><!-- HTML Comment here --><a href="http://example.com/">foo</a></div>
# comment => " HTML Comment here "
#
# NOTES: A comment nodes are accessed when installed
# the HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath (version >= 0.14) and/or
# the HTML::TreeBuilder::LibXML (version >= 0.13)
process "//div[contains(@class, 'body')]/comment()", comment => 'TEXT';
# <div class="body"><a href="http://example.com/">foo</a></div>
# link => URI->new("http://example.com/"), text => "foo"
process ".body > a", link => '@href', text => 'TEXT';
# <ul><li>foo</li><li>bar</li></ul>
# list => [ "foo", "bar" ]
process "li", "list[]" => "TEXT";
# <ul><li id="1">foo</li><li id="2">bar</li></ul>
# list => [ { id => "1", text => "foo" }, { id => "2", text => "bar" } ];
process "li", "list[]" => { id => '@id', text => "TEXT" };
process_first
"process_first" is the same as "process" but stops when the first matching result is
found.
# <span class="date">2008/12/21</span>
# <span class="date">2008/12/22</span>
# date => "2008/12/21"
process_first ".date", date => 'TEXT';
result
"result" allows one to return not the default value after processing but a single value
specified by a key or a hash reference built from several keys.
process 'a', 'want[]' => 'TEXT';
result 'want';
EXAMPLES
There are many examples in the "eg/" dir packaged in this distribution. It is recommended
to look through these.
NESTED SCRAPERS
Scrapers can be nested thus allowing to scrape already captured data.
# <ul>
# <li class="foo"><a href="foo1">bar1</a></li>
# <li class="bar"><a href="foo2">bar2</a></li>
# <li class="foo"><a href="foo3">bar3</a></li>
# </ul>
# friends => [ {href => 'foo1'}, {href => 'foo2'} ];
process 'li', 'friends[]' => scraper {
process 'a', href => '@href',
};
FILTERS
Filters are applied to the result after processing. They can be declared as anonymous
subroutines or as class names.
process $exp, $key => [ 'TEXT', sub { s/foo/bar/ } ];
process $exp, $key => [ 'TEXT', 'Something' ];
process $exp, $key => [ 'TEXT', '+MyApp::Filter::Foo' ];
Filters can be stacked
process $exp, $key => [ '@href', 'Foo', '+MyApp::Filter::Bar', \&baz ];
More about filters you can find in Web::Scraper::Filter documentation.
XML backends
By default HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath is used, this can be replaces by a XML::LibXML backend
using Web::Scraper::LibXML module.
use Web::Scraper::LibXML;
# same as Web::Scraper
my $scraper = scraper { ... };
AUTHOR
Tatsuhiko Miyagawa <miyagawa@bulknews.net>
LICENSE
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
<http://blog.labnotes.org/category/scrapi/>
HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath