Parse::BACKPAN::Packages(3)

NAME
Parse::BACKPAN::Packages - Provide an index of BACKPAN

SYNOPSIS
  use Parse::BACKPAN::Packages;
  my $p = Parse::BACKPAN::Packages->new();
  print "BACKPAN is " . $p->size . " bytes\n";

  my @filenames = keys %$p->files;

  # see Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::File
  my $file = $p->file("authors/id/L/LB/LBROCARD/Acme-Colour-0.16.tar.gz");
  print "That's " . $file->size . " bytes\n";

  # see Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::Release
  my @acme_colours = $p->releases("Acme-Colour");

  my @authors = $p->authors;
  my @acmes = $p->distributions_by('LBROCARD');

DESCRIPTION
Parse::BackPAN::Packages has been DEPRECATED. Please use the faster and more flexible BackPAN::Index.

The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a very useful collection of Perl code. However, in order to keep CPAN relatively small, authors of modules can delete older versions of modules to only let CPAN have the latest version of a module. BACKPAN is where these deleted modules are backed up. It's more like a full CPAN mirror, only without the deletions. This module provides an index of BACKPAN and some handy functions.

The data is fetched from the net and cached for an hour.

METHODS

  new
The constructor downloads a ~1M index file from the web and parses it, so it might take a while to run:

  my $p = Parse::BACKPAN::Packages->new();

By default it caches the file locally for one hour. If you do not want this caching then you can pass in:

  my $p = Parse::BACKPAN::Packages->new( { no_cache => 1 } );

  authors
The authors method returns a list of all the authors. This is meant so that you can pass them into the distributions_by method:

  my @authors = $p->authors;

  distributions
  my $distributions = $p->distributions;

The distributions method returns an array ref of the names of all the distributions in BackPAN.

  releases
The releases method returns a list of objects representing all the different releases of a distribution:

  # see Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::Release
  my @acme_colours = $p->releases("Acme-Colour");

  distributions_by
The distributions_by method returns a list of distribution names representing all the distributions that an author has uploaded:

  my @acmes = $p->distributions_by('LBROCARD');

  file
The file method finds metadata relating to a file:

  # see Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::File
  my $file = $p->file("authors/id/L/LB/LBROCARD/Acme-Colour-0.16.tar.gz");
  print "That's " . $file->size . " bytes\n";

  files
The files method returns a hash reference where the keys are the filenames of the files on CPAN and the values are Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::File objects:

  my @filenames = keys %$p->files;

  size
The size method returns the sum of all the file sizes in BACKPAN:

  print "BACKPAN is " . $p->size . " bytes\n";

AUTHOR
Leon Brocard <acme@astray.com>

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2005-9, Leon Brocard

LICENSE
This module is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO
BackPAN::Index, CPAN::DistInfoname