WWW::Robot::Agent
=================

What is it?
-----------

This suite of packages [ HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL ] provide basic
functionality of an 'abstract browser'. The idea is that that
abstract browser is only capable to load objects (pages) via
HTTP, FTP, ..., but itself has no other functionality.

It is the tasks of particular plugins to add more specific
functionality, such as 'Link Checking' or 'Spidering' or 'Having
headers like Firefox'.

To make that happen, the abstract browser exposes the phases of a
request to allow plugins (aka modules) to intercept when they feel the
need. [ If you understand Apache's module concept then you immediately
get the idea. ]

To make things interesting, and to allow the agent to be run in
reactive environments, it is written based on POE (Perl Object
Environment, or similar). The good side of this is, that your
application is not necessarily blocked when fetching documents off the
network. The downside is that programming is a bit more, well,
interesting.

Overview
--------

Apart from the abstract browser itself

   WWW::Agent

and some plugins in the

   WWW::Agent::Plugins::*

namespace.....

### NOT YET INCLUDED !!!
###
###, this package also provides the following off-the-shelf scripts
###
###  analyze --help
###
###      This program spiders through a web site and collects analytical
###      and statistical information.

Dependencies
------------

Nothing CPAN would not handle by itself. If you are not using CPAN, then
plz consult the Makefile.PL for an up-to-date list.  

Installation
------------

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

NOTE: At this stage I make use of a particular server on the network.
If you have no network, then some tests may fail.


Copyright (C) 2005 by Robert Barta

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.4 or,
at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.
