The World-Wide Web library for Perl - LWP is a set of Perl modules which provides a simple and consistent application programming interface (API) to the World-Wide Web.
The main focus of the library is to provide classes and functions that allow you to write WWW clients. The library also contain modules that are of more general use and even classes that help you implement simple HTTP servers.
Most modules in this library provide an object oriented API. The user agent, requests sent and responses received from the WWW server are all represented by objects. This makes a simple and powerful interface to these services. The interface is easy to extend and customize for your own needs.
The main features of the library are:
- Contains various reusable components (modules) that can be used separately or together.
- Provides an object oriented model of HTTP-style communication. Within this framework we currently support access to http, https, gopher, ftp, news, file, and mailto resources.
- Provides a full object oriented interface or a very simple procedural interface.
- Supports the basic and digest authorization schemes.
- Supports transparent redirect handling.
- Supports access through proxy servers.
- Provides parser for robots.txt files and a framework for constructing robots.
- Supports parsing of HTML forms. Implements HTTP content negotiation algorithm that can be used both in protocol modules and in server scripts (like CGI scripts).
- Supports HTTP cookies.
- Some simple command line clients, for instance
lwp-requestandlwp-download.
More information on the CPAN website.
