/ 
WWW-IRail-API-0.001
River stage zero No dependents
/ WWW::IRail::API

NAME

WWW::IRail::API - A wrapper for the iRail.be API

SYNOPSIS

use WWW::IRail::API;
use Data::Dumper;

## OO interface ############################################################################

my $irail = new WWW::IRail::API( dataType => 'YAML' );
my $trains_bxl_ost = $irail->lookup_connections(from => 'brussel noord', to => 'oostende');
print Dumper($trains_bxl_ost);

## functional interface ####################################################################

# YAML liveboard with trains departing from *Brussel Noord*
print irail from => 'brussel noord' 

# YAML connections of trains between *Brussel Noord* and *Oostende* for tomorrow at 14:00
print irail from => 'brussel noord', to => 'oostende', date => 'tomorrow afternoon'

# JSON station lookup of all stations matching qr/oost/
print irail station => qr/oost/, dataType => 'json'

# XML vehicle lookup
print irail vehicle => 'BE.NMBS.CR2089', dataType => 'XML'

# perl liveboard lookup
my $board = irail from => 'brussel noord', dataType => 'perl';

DESCRIPTION

WWW::IRail::API is a set of modules which allow you to query the http://dev.irail.be API for Stations, Connections, Liveboard and Vehicle data.

FEATURES

Multiple output formats

The returned results can be in either XML, JSON or YAML format. You can even select between two flavours XML (xml, XML) to suit your taste. Ofcourse, if you stay in perl, you can access the return object directly.

Isolated parsers based on HTTP::[qw/Request Response/]

The internal parsers consist of simply two subs. make_request() which takes in arbitrary query parameters and returns a HTTP::Request object. And parse_response() which takes a HTTP::Response and builds an object which it then returns in the desired output format.

This makes them isolated pieces of code and ideal for testing or plugging into other HTTP aware systems. You can thus safely use WWW::IRail::API::Connection in your code without ever using or loading any other of our modules.

Support for sync or async pluggable clients

Clients take HTTP::Request objects and process() them by a request over the wire. They then simply return the HTTP::Response or they will call a callback with the response as a first parameter.

If you are going to write your own client, you only need to implement a process sub which will be called with ($http_request, $callback) parameters giving you the option to either return from your process call and ignore the callback or call the callback and go async from there.

Natural data parsing

If date matches /\w/ it will hand over parsing to DateTime::Format::Natural. for example: date => 'friday at 6pm';

LIMITATIONS

* fetching the station list is an all or nothing operation, this should be cached
* natural date parsing is in english only. It can also not parse 'friday afternoon' (yet)

TODO

* implement caching
* implement AE/Coro LWP client (in another module)

EXAMPLES

Example you can run from the commandline to get you started quickly

# install App::cpanminus the easy way 
% curl -L http://cpanmin.us | sudo perl - --self-upgrade

# install the WWW::IRail::API modules
% cpanm -S WWW::IRail::API

# run a onliner from the commandline interface
% perl -MWWW::IRail::API -e 'print irail from => "brussel noord", to => "oostende", date => "next friday"