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AUTOSEARCH(1)	      User Contributed Perl Documentation	 AUTOSEARCH(1)

NAME
       AutoSearch -- a web-search tracking application

SYNOPSIS
       AutoSearch [--stats] [--verbose] -n "Query Name" -s "query string"
       --engine engine [--mail you@where.com] [--options "opt=val"]...
       [--filter "filter"] [--host host] [--port port] [--userid bbunny
       --password c4rr0t5] [--ignore_channels KABC,KCBS,KNBC] qid

       AutoSearch --VERSION AutoSearch --help AutoSearch --man

DESCRIPTION
       AutoSearch performs a web-based search and puts the results set in
       qid/index.html.	Subsequent searches (i.e., the second form above)
       AutoSearch determine what changes (if any) occured to the results sent
       since the last run.  These incremental changes are recorded in
       qid/YYYYMMDD.html.

       AutoSearch is amenable to be run as a cron job because all the input
       parameters are saved in the web pages.  AutoSearch can act as a
       automated query agent for a particular search.  The output files are
       designed to be a set of web pages to easily display the results set
       with a web browser.

       Example:

	   AutoSearch -n 'LSAM Replication'
	       -s '"lsam replication"'
	       -e AltaVista
	       replication_query

       This query (which should be all on one line) creates a directory
       replication_query and fills it with the fascinating output of the
       AltaVista query on "lsam replication", with pages titled ``LSAM
       Replication''.  (Note the quoting:  the single quotes in '"lsam
       replication"' are for the shell, the double quotes are for AltaVista to
       search for the phrase rather than the separate words.)

       A more complicated example:

	   AutoSearch -n 'External Links to LSAM'
	       -s '(link:www.isi.edu/lsam or link:www.isi.edu/~lsam) -url:isi.edu'
	       -e AltaVista::AdvancedWeb
	       -o coolness=hot

       This query does an advanced AltaVista search and specifies the
       (hypothetical) ``coolness'' option to the search engine.

OPTIONS
       "qid"
	   The query identifer specifies the directory in which all the files
	   that relate to this query and search results will live.  It can be
	   an absolute path, or a relative path from cwd.  If the directory
	   does not exist, it will be created and a new search started.

       "--stats"
	   Show search statistics: the query string, number of hits, number of
	   filtered hits, filter string, number of suspended (deleted) hits,
	   previous set size, current set size, etc.

       "-v" or "--verbose"
	   Verbose: output additional messages and warnings.

       "-n" or "--qn" or "--queryname"
	   Specify the query name.  The query name is used as a heading in the
	   web pages, therefore it should be a 'nice' looking version of the
	   query string.

       "-s" or "--qs" or "--querystring"
	   Specify the query string.  The query string is the character string
	   which will be submitted to the search engine.  You may include
	   special characters to group or to qualify the search.

       "-e" or "--engine"
	   Specify the search engine.  The query string will be submitted to
	   the user specified search engine.

	   In many cases there are specialized versions of search engines.
	   For example, AltaVista::AdvancedWeb and AltaVista::News allow more
	   powerful and Usenet searches.  See AltaVista or the man page for
	   your search engine for details about specialized variations.

       "--listnewurls"
	   In addition to all the normal file maintenance, print all new URLs
	   to STDOUT, one per line.

       "-o" or "--options"
	   Specify the query options.  The query options will be submitted to
	   the user search engine with the query string.  This feature permits
	   modification of the query string for a specific search engine or
	   option.  More than one query option may be specified.

	   Example: "-o what=news" causes AltaVista to search Usenet.
	   Although this works, the preferred mechanism in this case would be
	   "-e AltaVista::News" or "-e AltaVista::AdvancedNews".  Options are
	   intended for internal or expert use.

       "-f" or "--uf" or "--urlfilter"
	   This option specifies a regular expression which will be compared
	   against the URLs of any results; if they match the case-insensitive
	   regular expression, they will be removed from the hit set.

	   Example: "-f '.*\.isi\.edu'" avoids all of ISI's web pages.

       "--cleanup i"
	   Delete all traces of query results from more than i days ago.  If
	   --cleanup is given, all other options other than the qid will be
	   ignored.

       "--cmdline"
	   Reconstruct the complete command line (AutoSearch and all its
	   arguments) that was used to create the query results.  Command line
	   will be shown on STDERR.  If --cmdline is given, all other options
	   other than the qid will be ignored.

       "--mail user@address" or "-m user@address"
	   After search is complete, send email to that user, listing the NEW
	   results.  Email is HTML format.  Requires the Email::Send and
	   related modules.  If you send email through an SMTP server, you
	   must set environment variable SMTPSERVER to your server name or IP
	   address.  If your SMTP server requires password, you must set
	   environment variables SMTPUSERNAME and SMTPPASSWORD.	 If you send
	   email via sendmail, you should set environment variable SENDMAIL if
	   the sendmail executable is not in the path.

       "--emailfrom user@address"
	   If your outgoing mail server rejects email from certain users, you
	   can use this argument to set the From: header.

       "--userid bbunny"
	   If the search engine requires a login/password (e.g.
	   Ebay::Completed), use this.

       "--password Carr0t5"
	   If the search engine requires a login/password (e.g. Ebay::Mature),
	   use this.

DESCRIPTION
       AutoSearch submits a query to a search engine, produces HTML pages that
       reflect the set of 'hits' (filtered search results) returned by the
       search engine, and tracks these results over time.  The URL and title
       are displayed in the qid/index.html, the URL, the title, and
       description are displayed in the 'weekly' files.

       To organize these results, each search result is placed in a query
       information directory (qid).  The directory becomes the search results
       'handle', an easy way to track a set of results.	 Thus a qid of
       "/usr/local/htdocs/lsam/autosearch/load_balancing" might locate the
       results on your web server at
       "http://www.isi.edu/lsam/autosearch/load_balancing".

       Inside the qid directory you will find files relating to this query.
       The primary file is index.html, which reflects the latest search
       results.	 Every not-filtered hit for every search is stored in
       index.html.  When a hit is no longer found by the search engine it a
       removed from index.html.	 As new results for a search are returned from
       the search engine they are placed in index.html.

       At the bottom of index.html, there is a heading "Weekly Search
       Results", which is updated each time the search is submitted (see
       "AUTOMATED SEARCHING").	The list of search runs is stored in reverse
       chronological order.  Runs which provide no new information are
       identified with

	       No Unique Results found for search on <date>

       Runs which contain changes are identified by

	       Web search results for search on <date>

       which will be linked a page detailing the changes from that run.

       Detailed search results are noted in weekly files.  These files are
       named YYYYMMDD.html and are stored in the qid directory.	 The weekly
       files include THE URL, title, and a the description (if available).
       The title is a link to the original web page.

AUTOMATED SEARCHING
       On UNIX-like systems, cron(1) may be used to establish periodic
       searches and the web pages will be maintained by AutoSearch.  To
       establish the first search, use the first example under SYNOPSIS.  You
       must specify the qid, query name and query string.  If any of the items
       are missing, you will be interactively prompted for the missing
       item(s).

       Once the first search is complete you can re-run the search with the
       second form under SYNOPSIS.

       A cron entry like:

	   0 3 * * 1 /nfs/u1/wls/AutoSearch.pl /www/div7/lsam/autosearch/caching

       might be used to run the search each Monday at 3:00 AM.	The query name
       and query string may be repeated; but they will not be used.  This
       means that with a cron line like:

	   0 3 * * 1 /nfs/u1/wls/AutoSearch.pl /www/div7/lsam/autosearch/caching -n caching -s caching

       a whole new search series can be originated by

	   rm -r /www/div7/lsam/autosearch/caching

       However, the only reason to start a new search series would be to throw
       away the old weekly files.

       We don't recommend running searches more than once per day, but if so
       the per-run files will be updated in-place.  Any changes are added to
       the page with a comment that "Recently Added:"; and deletions are
       indicated with "Recently Suspended:."

CHANGING THE LOOK OF THE PAGES
       The basic format of these two pages is simple and customizable.	One
       requirement is that the basic structure remain unchanged.  HTML
       comments are used to identify sections of the document.	Almost
       everything can be changed except for the strings which identify the
       section starts and ends.

       Noteworthy tags and their meaning:

       <!--Top-->.*<!--/Top-->
		       The text contained within this tag is placed at the top
		       of the output page.  If the text contains AutoSearch
		       WEB Searching, then the query name will replace it.  If
		       the text does not contain this magic string and it is
		       the first ever search, the user will be asked for a
		       query name.

       <!--Query{.*}/Query-->
		       The text contained between the braces is the query
		       string.	This is how AutoSearch maintains the query
		       string.	You may edit this string to change the query
		       string; but only in qid/index.html.  The text ask user
		       is special and will force AutoSearch to request the
		       search string from the user.

       <!--SearchEngine{.*}/SearchEngine-->
		       The text contained between the braces is the search
		       engine.	Other engines supported are HotBot and Lycos.
		       You may edit this string to change the engine used; but
		       only in qid/index.html.	The text ask user is special
		       and will force AutoSearch to to request the search
		       string from the user.

       <!--QueryOptions{.*}/QueryOptions-->
		       The text contained between the braces specifies a query
		       options.	 Multiple occurrencs of this command are
		       allowed to specify multiple options.

       <!--URLFilter{.*}/URLFilter-->
		       The text contained between the braces is the URL
		       filter.	This is how AutoSearch maintains the filter.
		       Again you may edit this string to change the query
		       string; but only in qid/index.html.  The text ask user
		       is special and will force AutoSearch to ask the user
		       (STDIN) for the query string.  When setting up the
		       first search, you must edit first_index.html, not
		       qid/index.html.	The URL filter is a standard perl5
		       regular expression.  URLs which do not match will be
		       kept.

       <!--Bottom-->.*<!--/Bottom-->
		       The text contained within this tag is placed at the
		       bottom of the output page.  This is a good place to put
		       navigation, page owner information, etc.

       The remainder of the tags fall into a triplet of ~Heading, ~Template,
       and ~, where ~ is Summary, Weekly, Appended, and Suspended. The sub-
       sections appear in the order given.  To produce a section AutoSearch
       outputs the heading, the template, the section, n copies of the
       formatted data, and an /section.	 The tags and their function are:

       ~Heading	       The heading tag identifies the heading for a section of
		       the output file.	 The SummaryHeading is for the summary
		       portion, etc.  The section may be empty (e.g.,
		       Suspended) and thus no heading is output.

       ~Template       The template tag identifies how each item is to be
		       formatted.  Simple text replacement is used to change
		       the template into the actual output text.  The text to
		       be replaced is noted in ALLCAPS.

       ~	       This tag is used to locate the section (Summary,
		       Weekly, etc.).  This section represents the actual
		       n-items of data.

       You can edit these values in the qid/index.html page of an existing
       search.	The file first_index.html (in the directory above qid) will be
       used as a default template for new queries.

       Examples of these files can be seen in the pages under
       "http://www.isi.edu/lsam/tools/autosearch/", or in the output generated
       by a new AutoSearch.

FILES
       first_index.html	   optional file to determine the default format of
			   the index.html file of a new query.

       first_date.html	   optional file to determine the default format of
			   the YYYYMMDD.html file for a new query.

       qid/index.html	   (automatically created) latest search results, and
			   reverse chronological list of periodic searches.

       qid/date.html	   file used as a template for the YYYYMMDD.html
			   files.

       qid/YYYYMMDD.html   (automatically created) summary of changes for a
			   particular date (AKA 'Weekly' file).

       Optional files first_index.html and first_date.html are used for the
       initial search as a template for qid/index.html and date.html,
       respectively.  If either of these files does not exist; a default-
       default template is stored within the AutoSearch source.	 The intention
       of these two files is to permit a user to establish a framework for a
       group of search sets which have a common format.	 By leaving the
       default query name and query string alone, they will be overridden by
       command line inputs.

SEE ALSO
       For the library, see WWW::Search, for the perl regular expressions, see
       perlre.

AUTHORS
       Wm. L. Scheding

       AutoSearch is a re-implementation of an earlier version written by
       Kedar Jog.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 1996-1997 University of Southern California.  All rights
       reserved.

       Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
       provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
       duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising
       materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use
       acknowledge that the software was developed by the University of
       Southern California, Information Sciences Institute.  The name of the
       University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from
       this software without specific prior written permission.

       THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
       WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
       MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

DESIRED FEATURES
       These are good ideas that people have suggested.

       URL validation.
	   Validate the status of each URL (with HTTP HEAD requests) and
	   indicate this status in the output.

       Multi-search.
	   It should be possible to merge the results of searches from two
	   search-engines.  If this merger were done as a new search engine,
	   this operation would be transparent to AutoSearch.

BUGS
       None known at this time; please inform the maintainer mthurn@cpan.org
       if any crop up.

perl v5.14.1			  2008-07-14			 AUTOSEARCH(1)
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