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CPAN-WWW-Testers-Generator-0.24
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/ CPAN::WWW::Testers::Generator

NAME

CPAN::WWW::Testers::Generator - Download and summarize CPAN Testers data

SYNOPSIS

% cpanstats
# ... wait patiently, very patiently
# ... then use cpanstats.db, an SQLite database

DESCRIPTION

This distribution was originally written by Leon Brocard to download and summarize CPAN Testers data. However, all of the original code has been rewritten to use the CPAN Testers Statistics database generation code. This now means that all the CPAN Testers sites including the Reports site, the Statistics site and the CPAN Dependencies site, can use the same database.

This module downloads articles from the cpan-testers newsgroup, generating or updating an SQLite database containing all the most important information. You can then query this database, or use CPAN::WWW::Testers to present it over the web.

A good example query for Acme-Colour would be:

SELECT version, status, count(*) FROM cpanstats WHERE
distribution = "Acme-Colour" group by version, state;

To create a database from scratch can take several hours, as there are now over 1.5 million articles in the newgroup. As such updating from a known copy of the database is much more advisable. If you don't want to generate the database yourself, you can obtain the latest official copy (compressed with gzip) at http://stats.cpantesters.org/cpanstats.db.gz

It should be noted that now with nearly 2 million articles in the archive, running this software to generate the databases from scratch can take a long time (days), unless you have a high-end processor machine. And even then it will still take a long time!

DATABASE SCHEMA

The cpanstats database schema is very straightforward, one main table with several index tables to speed up searches. The main table is as below:

+--------------------------------+
| cpanstats                      |
+----------+---------------------+
| id       | INTEGER PRIMARY KEY |
| state    | TEXT                |
| postdate | TEXT                |
| tester   | TEXT                |
| dist     | TEXT                |
| version  | TEXT                |
| platform | TEXT                |
| perl     | TEXT                |
| osname   | TEXT                |
| osvers   | TEXT                |
| archname | TEXT                |
+----------+---------------------+

The articles database schema is again very straightforward, and consists of one table, as below:

+--------------------------------+
| cpanstats                      |
+----------+---------------------+
| id       | INTEGER PRIMARY KEY |
| article  | TEXT                |
+----------+---------------------+

INTERFACE

The Constructor

  • new

    Instatiates the object CPAN::WWW::Testers::Generator. Accepts a hash containing values to prepare the object. These are described as:

    my $obj = CPAN::WWW::Testers::Generator->new(
              logfile   => './here/logfile',
              directory => './here'
);

    Where 'logfile' is the location to write log messages. Log messages are only written if a logfile entry is specified, and will always append to any existing file. The 'directory' value is where all databases will be created.

Methods

  • articles

    Accessor to set/get the database full path.

  • database

    Accessor to set/get the database full path.

  • directory

    Accessor to set/get the directory where the database is to be created.

  • generate

    Starting from the last recorded article, retrieves all the more recent articles from the NNTP server, parsing each and recording the articles that either upload announcements or reports.

  • insert_article

    Inserts an article into the articles database.

  • insert_stats

    Inserts the components of a parsed article into the statistics database.

  • logfile

    Accessor to set/get where the logging information is to be kept. Note that if this not set, no logging occurs.

HISTORY

The CPAN testers was conceived back in May 1998 by Graham Barr and Chris Nandor as a way to provide multi-platform testing for modules. Today there are over 1.5 million tester reports and more than 100 testers each month giving valuable feedback for users and authors alike.

BECOME A TESTER

Whether you have a common platform or a very unusual one, you can help by testing modules you install and submitting reports. There are plenty of module authors who could use test reports and helpful feedback on their modules and distributions.

If you'd like to get involved, please take a look at the CPAN Testers Wiki, where you can learn how to install and configure one of the recommended smoke tools.

For further help and advice, please subscribe to the the CPAN Testers discussion mailing list.

CPAN Testers Wiki - http://wiki.cpantesters.org
CPAN Testers Discuss mailing list
  - http://lists.cpan.org/showlist.cgi?name=cpan-testers-discuss

AUTHOR

Original author:    Leon Brocard <acme@astray.com>   200?-2008
Current maintainer: Barbie       <barbie@cpan.org>   2008-present

LICENSE

This code is distributed under the same license as Perl.