That's cool but too complicated

The original question was "How does one query the metacpan api from perl?", to which the IMO best answer is indeed MetaCPAN::Client. Why reject it so quickly? I'd recommend having a look at the documentation. You'll see it's actually pretty easy to use.

Here's what fetching the version of a distro looks like without the module:

use warnings;
use strict;
use HTTP::Tiny;
use URI;
use Cpanel::JSON::XS qw/decode_json/;

my $http = HTTP::Tiny->new;

my @modules = @ARGV ? @ARGV : ('MetaCPAN::Client');

for my $mod (@modules) {
        my $uri = URI->new('http://fastapi.metacpan.org/v1/module');
        $uri->path_segments( $uri->path_segments, $mod );
        my $resp = $http->get($uri);
        die "$uri: $resp->{status} $resp->{reason}\n" unless $resp->{s
+uccess};
        my $api = decode_json($resp->{content});
        print "$mod: $api->{version}\n";
}
[download]

Update: In comparison, stevieb showed just how easy using the module makes it.