Code4Lib Journal Perl module (version .003)

I hacked together a Code4Lib Journal Perl module providing read-only access to the Journal’s underlying WordPress (MySQL) database. You can download the distribution, and the following is from the distribution’s README file:

This is the README file for a Perl module called C4LJ — Code4Lib Journal

Code4Lib Journal is the refereed serial of the Code4Lib community. [1] The community desires to make the Journal’s content as widely accessible as possible. To that end, this Perl module is a read-only API against the Journal’s underlying WordPress database. Its primary purpose is to generate XML files that can be uploaded to the Directory of Open Access Journals and consequently made available through their OAI interface. [2]

Installation

To install the module you first need to have access to a WordPress (MySQL) database styled after the Journal. There is sample data in the distribution’s etc directory.

Next, you need to edit lib/C4LJ/Config.pm. Specifically, you will need to change the values of:

* $DATA_SOURCE – the DSN of your database, and you will probably need to only edit the value of the database name

* $USERNAME – the name of a account allowed to read the database

* $PASSWORD – the password of $USERNAME

Finally, exploit the normal Perl installation procedure: make; make test; make install.

Usage

To use the module, you will want to use C4LJ::Articles->get_articles. Call this method. Get back a list of article objects, and process each one. Something like this:

  use C4LJ::Article;
  foreach ( C4LJ::Article->get_articles ) {
    print '        ID: ' . $_->id       . "\n";
    print '     Title: ' . $_->title    . "\n";
    print '       URL: ' . $_->url      . "\n";
    print '  Abstract: ' . $_->abstract . "\n";
    print '    Author: ' . $_->author   . "\n";
    print '      Date: ' . $_->date     . "\n";
    print '     Issue: ' . $_->issue    . "\n";
    print "\n";
  }

The bin directory contains three sample applications:

1. dump-metadata.pl – the code above, basically

2. c4lj2doaj.pl – given an issue number, output XML suitable for DOAJ

3. c4lj2doaj.cgi – the same as c4lj2doaj.pl but with a Web interface

See the modules’ PODs for more detail.

License

This module is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Notes

[1] Code4Lib Journal – http://journal.code4lib.org/
[2] DOAJ OAI information – http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=loadTempl&templ=070509