NAME Parse::BACKPAN::Packages - Provide an index of BACKPAN SYNOPSIS use Parse::BACKPAN::Packages; my $p = Parse::BACKPAN::Packages->new(); print "BACKPAN is " . $p->size . " bytes\n"; my @filenames = keys %$p->files; # see Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::File my $file = $p->file("authors/id/L/LB/LBROCARD/Acme-Colour-0.16.tar.gz"); print "That's " . $file->size . " bytes\n"; # see Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::Distribution my @acme_colours = $p->distributions("Acme-Colour"); my @authors = $p->authors; my @acmes = $p->distributions_by('LBROCARD'); DESCRIPTION The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a very useful collection of Perl code. However, in order to keep CPAN relatively small, authors of modules can delete older versions of modules to only let CPAN have the latest version of a module. BACKPAN is where these deleted modules are backed up. It's more like a full CPAN mirror, only without the deletions. This module provides an index of BACKPAN and some handy functions. The data is fetched from the net and cached for an hour. METHODS new The constructor downloads a ~1M index file from the web and parses it, so it might take a while to run: my $p = Parse::BACKPAN::Packages->new(); authors The authors method returns a list of all the authors. This is meant so that you can pass them into the distributions_by method: my @authors = $p->authors; distributions The distributions method returns a list of objects representing all the different versions of a distribution: # see Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::Distribution my @acme_colours = $p->distributions("Acme-Colour"); distributions_by The distributions_by method returns a list of distribution names representing all the distributions that an author has uploaded: my @acmes = $p->distributions_by('LBROCARD'); file The file method finds metadata relating to a file: # see Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::File my $file = $p->file("authors/id/L/LB/LBROCARD/Acme-Colour-0.16.tar.gz"); print "That's " . $file->size . " bytes\n"; files The files method returns a hash reference where the keys are the filenames of the files on CPAN and the values are Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::File objects: my @filenames = keys %$p->files; size The size method returns the sum of all the file sizes in BACKPAN: print "BACKPAN is " . $p->size . " bytes\n"; AUTHOR Leon Brocard COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2005, Leon Brocard This module is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. SEE ALSO CPAN::DistInfoname, Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::File, Parse::BACKPAN::Packages::Distribution, Parse::CPAN::Packages.