Google Hacks, 2nd Edition

Program Google with the Net::Google Perl Module

A crisp, clean, object-oriented alternative to programming Google with Perl and the SOAP::Lite module.

An alternative, more object-oriented Perl interface to the Google API is Aaron Straup Cope’s Net::Google (http://search.cpan.org/search?query=net+ google&mode=module). While not fundamentally different from using SOAP::Lite [Hack #93] as we do throughout this book, constructing Google API queries and dealing with the results is a little cleaner.

There are three main Google API interfaces defined by the module: search(), spelling(), and cache( ) for talking to the Google Web search engine, spellchecker, and Google cache, respectively.

To provide a side-by-side comparison to googly.pl [Hack #92] , the typical SOAP::Lite-based way to talk to the Google API, we’ve provided a script identical in function and almost so in structure.

The Code

Save the following script as net_googly.pl. Replace insert key here with your Google API key as you type in the code.

Tip

Mind you, you’ll still need SOAP::Lite and a couple of other prerequisites to use Net::Google.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# net_googly.pl
# A typical Google API script using the Net::Google Perl module.
# Usage: perl net_googly.pl <query>
     
use strict;
     
# Use the Net::Google Perl module.
use Net::Google;
     
# Your Google API developer's key.
use constant GOOGLE_API_KEY => 'insert key here'; # Take the query from the command line. my $query = shift @ARGV or die "Usage: perl net_googly.pl <query>\n"; ...