June 2002
Intermediate to advanced
260 pages
6h 51m
English
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Chapter 1. Introduction to Web Automation
LWP (short for “Library for World Wide Web in Perl”) is a set of Perl modules and object-oriented classes for getting data from the Web and for extracting information from HTML. This chapter provides essential background on the LWP suite. It describes the nature and history of LWP, which platforms it runs on, and how to download and install it. This chapter ends with a quick walkthrough of several LWP programs that illustrate common tasks, such as fetching web pages, extracting information using regular expressions, and submitting forms.
The Web as Data Source
Most web sites are designed for people. User Interface gurus consult for large sums of money to build HTML code that is easy to use and displays correctly on all browsers. User Experience gurus wag their fingers and tell web designers to study their users, so they know the human foibles and desires of the ape descendents who will be viewing the web site.
Fundamentally, though, a web site is home to data and services. A stockbroker has stock prices and the value of your portfolio (data) and forms that let you buy and sell stock (services). Amazon has book ISBNs, titles, authors, reviews, prices, and rankings (data) and forms that let you order those books (services).
It’s assumed that the data and services will be accessed by people viewing the rendered HTML. But many a programmer has eyed those data sources and services on the Web and thought “I’d like to use those in a program!” For ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.