WWW::Wikipedia(3pm)					User Contributed Perl Documentation				       WWW::Wikipedia(3pm)

NAME

       WWW::Wikipedia - Automated interface to the Wikipedia

SYNOPSIS

	 use WWW::Wikipedia;
	 my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();

	 ## search for 'perl'
	 my $result = $wiki->search( 'perl' );

	 ## if the entry has some text print it out
	 if ( $result->text() ) {
	     print $result->text();
	 }

	 ## list any related items we can look up
	 print join( "
", $result->related() );

DESCRIPTION

       WWW::Wikipedia provides an automated interface to the Wikipedia <http://www.wikipedia.org>, which is a free, collaborative, online
       encyclopedia. This module allows you to search for a topic and return the resulting entry. It also gives you access to related topics which
       are also available via the Wikipedia for that entry.

INSTALLATION

       To install this module type the following:

	   perl Makefile.PL
	   make
	   make test
	   make install

METHODS

   new()
       The constructor. You can pass it a two letter language code, or nothing to let it default to 'en'.

	   ## Default: English
	   my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();

	   ## use the French wiki instead
	   my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new( language => 'fr' );

       WWW::Wikipedia is a subclass of LWP::UserAgent. If you would like to have more control over the user agent (control timeouts, proxies ...)
       you have full access.

	   ## set HTTP request timeout
	   my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();
	   $wiki->timeout( 2 );

       You can turn off the following of wikipedia redirect directives by passing a false value to "follow_redirects".

   language()
       This allows you to get and set the language you want to use. Two letter language codes should be used. The default is 'en'.

	   my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new( language => 'es' );

	   # Later on...
	   $wiki->language( 'fr' );

   follow_redirects()
       By default, wikipeda redirect directives are followed. Set this to false to turn that off.

   search()
       Which performs the search and returns a WWW::Wikipedia::Entry object which you can query further. See WWW::Wikipedia::Entry docs for more
       info.

	   $entry = $wiki->search( 'Perl' );
	   print $entry->text();

       If there's a problem connecting to Wikipedia, "undef" will be returned and the error message will be stored in "error()".

   random()
       This method fetches a random wikipedia page.

   error()
       This is a generic error accessor/mutator. You can retrieve any searching error messages here.

TODO

       o   Clean up results. Strip HTML.

       o   Watch the development of Special:Export XML formatting, eg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/perl

SEE ALSO

       o   LWP::UserAgent

AUTHORS

       Ed Summers <ehs@pobox.com>

       Brian Cassidy <bricas@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright 2003-2011 by Ed Summers

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

perl v5.10.1							    2011-04-05						       WWW::Wikipedia(3pm)