• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
• CONFIGURATION
• CPAN
• DB
• WWW
• DETAILS
• SEE ALSO
• COPYRIGHT

NAME

CPAN::Search::Lite::Index - set up or update database tables.

SYNOPSIS

 my $index = CPAN::Search::Lite::Index->new(config => 'cpan.conf', setup => 1);
 $index->index();

DESCRIPTION

This is the main module used to set up or update the database tables used to store information from the CPAN and ppm indices. The creation of the object

 my $index = CPAN::Search::Lite::Index->new(%args);

accepts three arguments:

• config => /path/to/config.conf
  
This argument specifies where to find the configuration file used to determine the remaining options. In lieu of this option, the environment variable CSL_CONFIG_FILE pointing to the configuration file may be specified.
• setup => 1
  
This (optional) argument specifies that the database is being set up. Any existing tables will be dropped.
• reindex => value
  
This (optional) argument specifies distribution names that one would like to reindex in an existing database. These may be specified as either a scalar, for a single distribution, or as an array reference for a list of distributions.

CONFIGURATION

Most of the options used to control the behaviour of the indexing are contained in a configuration file. An example of the format of such a file is

 [CPAN]

 CPAN = /var/ftp/pub/CPAN
 pod_root = /usr/local/POD
 html_root = /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/CPAN

 [DB]

 db = pause
 user = sarah
 passwd = lianne

 [WWW]

 css = cpan.css
 up_img = up.gif
 tt2 = /usr/local/tt2
 geoip = /usr/local/share/geoip/cpan.txt

This consists of 3 sections.

CPAN

This is associated with various things related to CPAN.

• CPAN = /var/ftp/pub/CPAN
  
This specifies the root directory of the local CPAN mirror, if this exists, or the location where the CPAN index files will be downloaded and kept, if the no_mirror option is specified.
• pod_root = /usr/local/POD
  
This specifies where the extracted pod files from a distribution will be kept. A subdirectory dist_name under this directory will be created corresponding to the name of the distribution.
• pod_only = 1
  
This specifies that, if the module files are to be extracted, fetch only those that contain pod.
• split_pod = 1
  
This specifies that, if the module files are to be extracted, when generating the html pages create two pages for each module: one containing just the documentation, and the other containing the code run through Perl::Tidy. For a module such as Foo::Bar, the documentation will be saved as a file Foo/Bar.html, while the sources will be saved as Foo/Bar.pm.html.
• html_root = /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/CPAN
  
This specifies where the html files created from the pod files will be kept. A subdirectory dist_name under this directory will be created corresponding to the name of the distribution.
• ignore = some_dist_name_to_ignore
  
This specifies a name of a distribution (without a version number) to ignore in indexing. This option may be given a number of times to specify an array of values, or may be specified as

  ignore = <<EOL
  Module-CPANTS-asHash
  CORBA-IDL
  EOL

This array of values (which may include regular expressions) is joined together as

  $pat = join '|', @ignore_dists

and if the distribution name matches

  $dist_name =~ /^($pat)$/

the distribution is ignored.

• no_mirror = 1
  
This specifies that a local CPAN mirror isn't available, and as such no pod or html files will be extracted nor created.
• no_ppm = 1
  
This can be used to signal to not gather information on Win32 ppm packages from the repositories specified in $repositories of the CPAN::Search::Lite::Util manpage.
• remote_mirror = http://cpan.wherever.edu
  
If no_mirror is specified, the value of remote_mirror will be used to fetch the CPAN indices. If not given, http://www.cpan.org will be used.
• multiplexer = http://cpan.redirect.edu/cpan
  
This can be used to specify a multiplexer to redirect downloads to nearby CPAN mirrors. See, for example, the Apache::GeoIP manpage for one implementation.
• cat_threshold = 0.99
  
Many modules do not have a category (chapter) associated with them. In such cases, when populating the database, the AI::Catgorizer module is used to guess which category should be assigned to such a module, based on available information for those modules that do have a category. The value of cat_threshold is used to determine if the guessed category should be accepted (a perfect match has a score of 1, and no match has 0). If no such value is given, a default of 0.995 is used.
• no_cat = 1
  
Set no_cat equal to a true value if you don't want AI::Categorizer to try categorizing modules which don't have a category assigned.

DB

This is used to store connection information to the database used to populate the tables.

• db = pause
  
This is the name of the database used. It is assumed here that the database has already been created, and that appropriate read, write, update, create, and delete permissions for the user specified below have already been granted.
• user = sarah
  
This is the user under which to connect to the database.
• passwd = lianne
  
This is the password to use for the user.

WWW

This is used for various information related to a web interface.

• css = cpan.css
  
If specified, this will be used as the css file when generating the html files from the pod files of the distribution. It is assumed this file appears directly beneath the html_root of the CPAN section.
• up_img = up.gif
  
If specified, this will be used as an image in the generated html files linking each section to the top-most index. If not specifed, the text __top will be used. It is assumed this image appears directly beneath the html_root of the CPAN section.
• tt2 = /usr/local/tt2
  
This gives the location of the Template-Toolkit pages used to provide a web interface. This is used to place a file mirror_list (extracted from $CPAN/MIRRORED.BY) containing a list of CPAN mirrors.
• geoip = /usr/local/share/geoip/cpan.txt
  
If the module Geo::IP or Apache::GeoIP is used to provide a redirection service to a nearby CPAN mirror based on the location of origin, this file will be created to provide the necessary country of origins of the CPAN mirrors.

DETAILS

Calling

  $index->index();

will start the indexing procedure. Various messages detailing the progress will written to STDOUT, which by default will be captured into a file cpan_search_log.dddddddddd, where the extension is the time that the method was invoked. Passing index an argument of log => log_file will save these messages into log_file. Error messages are not captured, and will appear in STDERR.

The steps of the indexing procedure are as follows.

• fetch index data
  
If the no_mirror option is specified, the necessary CPAN index files $CPAN/MIRRORED.BY, $CPAN/indices/ls-lR.gz, $CPAN/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz, $CPAN/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz, and $CPAN/modules/03modlist.data.gz will be fetched from the CPAN mirror specified by the $cpan variable at the beginning of the CPAN::Search::Lite::Index manpage. If you are using this option, it is recommended to use the same CPAN mirror with subsequent updates, to ensure consistency of the database. As well, the information on the locations of the CPAN mirrors used for Template-Toolkit and GeoIP is written.
• get index information
  
Information from the CPAN indices and, if desired, the ppm repositories is extracted. This is done through the CPAN::Search::Lite::Info manpage (for the CPAN indices) and the CPAN::Search::Lite::PPM manpage (for the ppm repositories).
• get state information
  
Unless the setup argument within the new method of the CPAN::Search::Lite::Index manpage is specified, this will get information on the state of the database through the CPAN::Search::Lite::State manpage. A comparision is then made between this information and that gathered from the CPAN indices, and if there's a discrepency in some items, those items are marked for either insertion, updating, or deletion, as appropriate.
• extract files
  
Unless the no_mirror option is specified, this will extract, through the CPAN::Search::Lite::Extract manpage, the available pod sections of files of a distribution, placing them under a subdirectory dist_name (corrsponding to the name of the distribution) under the specified pod_root in the configuration file. pod2html is then run on them, with the results placed under dist_name of html_root. Also, a README, Changes, INSTALL, and META.yml file, if present, will be copied over into dist_name under pod_root. Finally, information on the prerequisites of the distribution, and distribution and module descriptions, if available and needed, is extracted.
• populate the database
  
At this stage the gathered information is used to populate the database, through the CPAN::Search::Lite::Populate manpage, either inserting new items, updating existing ones, or deleting obsolete items.

As well, unless the no_mirror option is specified, the html files created under html_root will be edited to adjust the links to module files. This is necessary because when the html files are created no cache is used (in order to maintain consistency between updates), and consequently links to packages outside of a given package may be incorrect. This is fixed by querying the database to see what module documentation is actually present, and then adjusting the links in the html files accordingly (or removing a link if the indicated documentation is missing).

SEE ALSO

the CPAN::Search::Lite::Info manpage, the CPAN::Search::Lite::PPM manpage, the CPAN::Search::Lite::State manpage, the CPAN::Search::Lite::Extract manpage, the CPAN::Search::Lite::Populate manpage, and the CPAN::Search::Lite::Util manpage. Development takes place on the CPAN-Search-Lite project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpan-search/.

COPYRIGHT

This software is copyright 2004 by Randy Kobes <randy@theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca>. Use and redistribution are under the same terms as Perl itself.