App::scrape is more limited - it just uses CSS selectors to build up a Perl data structure from an HTML page. Handy yes, but Web::Magic does much more than that.

Can App::scrape handle YAML seamlessly?

use Web::Magic -sub=>'web';
say web('http://www.cpantesters.org/distro/W/Web-Magic.yaml')
  ->[0]{guid};
[download]

Or feeds?

use Web::Magic -sub=>'web';
say $_->title
  foreach web('http://www.w3.org/News/atom.xml')->entries;
[download]

Or for that matter JSON, RDF, arbitrary XML, etc?

And how about POST requests?

use 5.010;
use Web::Magic -sub => 'web';

# Paste to paste2.org, and say the URL it was pasted to
say web('http://paste2.org/new-paste')
  ->POST({
      code        => 'say "Hello world";',
      lang        => 'perl',
      description => 'Perl Hello World',
      parent      => 0,
      submit      => 'Submit',
    })
  ->Content_Type('application/x-www-form-urlencoded')
  ->header('Location');
[download]

**thread bump**

App::scrape is more limited - it just uses CSS selectors to build up a Perl data structure from an HTML page.

It uses css and xpath, but yes, it is slightly simpler

Can App::scrape handle YAML seamlessly?

No, but I'm sure it could , in about five lines :) Tree::XPathEngine, its on CPAN :)

Or for that matter JSON, RDF, arbitrary XML, etc?

It does support RDF.

And how about POST requests?

Sure, its right there in the SYNOPSIS  use LWP::Simple qw(get);, you an just as easily write  use LWP::Simple qw( $ua ); and use  $ua->POST(...)

I recognize that it does a lot more, and a large number of the prereqs are your modules -- that is a lot of work -- but why?

Web::Magic won't help me "fake" a proper ua_string like WWW::Mechanize , and it has all those exceptions, but no cookie jar?

Magic? Dwimmery? Awesomness? -- yes, I like kung-fu panda too :)

HTML::Query, Web::Query, Web::Scraper, Web::Magic ... a lot of the same kind of work, which horse to choose?

Sell me a horse?

I'm sure you have philosophy, reasons for doing things your way, a big and little picture.... I'd love to know what it is :) I just don't have a grasp of the thing.

Maybe its because i'm not a "24" fan ? What can I say, Kiefer Sutherland grates me worse than David Caruso :)

Can you enlighten me?

[App::scrape] does support RDF.

No, it does not. Accepting XML does not count as supporting RDF. In general, RDF cannot be effectively processed with XML tools.

Web::Magic won't help me "fake" a proper ua_string like WWW::Mechanize , and it has all those exceptions, but no cookie jar?

Web::Magic lets you specify any user agent string you like. The POD for the "set_request_header" method shows two examples of how to do precisely that:

$magic->set_request_header('User-Agent', 'MyBot/0.1');
$magic->User_Agent('MyBot/0.1');  # same as above
[download]

And if you have a cookie jar you'd like to use:

$magic->user_agent->cookie_jar($cookies);
[download]

HTML::Query, Web::Query, Web::Scraper, Web::Magic ... a lot of the same kind of work, which horse to choose?

Sell me a horse?

Selecting stuff via CSS selectors is only a very small part of what Web::Magic does. (I almost regret using that feature in my first example.) Web::Magic aims to be the swiss army knife of HTTP-addressable resources. Whether it's a classic web page, a RESTful API, an Atom feed, or a WebDAV fileshare, Web::Magic can probably make dealing with it easier.

Let's suppose you have a RESTful API which supports up XML and JSON, depending on the request's HTTP Accept header. Web::Magic notices how you're trying to access the data, and does what you mean...

Web::Magic->new('http://example.com/new-document')
  ->POST($xmldom)
  ->{entry}{id};
[download]

It's smart enough to figure out the HTTP headers you want:

POST /new-document HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Content-Type: application/xml
Accept: application/json, text/x-yaml

<xmldoc>...</xmldoc>

But if you'd called it like this:

my @entries =
  Web::Magic->new('http://example.com/new-document')
    ->POST({ title => "Hello", foo => 1 })
    ->entries;
print $entries[0]->id;
[download]

Then the request would be more like:

POST /new-document HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: application/atom+xml, application/rss+xml

title=Hello&foo=1