Astronomy related Perl Modules.
(copied from Astro/ADS/README)
The Astro::ADS module is an objected orientated Perl interface to the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) abstract service. The ADS is a NASA-funded project whose main resource is an Abstract Service, which includes four sets of abstracts: 1) astronomy and astrophysics, containing 719,449 abstracts; 2) instrumentation, containing 608,834 abstracts; 3) physics and geophysics, containing 1,079,814 abstracts; and 4) Los Alamos preprint server, containing 4,104 abstracts. Each dataset can be searched by author, object name (astronomy only), title, or abstract text words.
As this is an early release of the module only minimal query functionality is included, however all the backend interaction with the ADS server is in place and additional functionality (e.g. adding weights and scoring) should be along shortly. I'm currently following the "relase early, release often" strategy.
Comments and patches are always welcome.
There is already a Perl interface to the ADS in existance written by Alberto Accomazzi aaccomazzi@cfa.harvard.edu, however it was written for Perl 4, isn't object orientated and hasn't been updated in some time. See http://ads.harvard.edu/www/adswww-lib/adswww-0.8.1.html for details of this package.
Due to the requirements of the eSTAR project for which this module was written I needed a modern object-orientated interface I could use for data mining the ADS. This module was the result.
The module requires the libwww-perl-5.60 package written by Gisle Aas gisle@ActiveState.com v5.53 or above. This package can be obtained via CPAN at http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=libwww-perl
Also required is the Net::Domain module, v2.13 or above, by Graham Barr gbarr@pobox.com. This module has been included in the base distribution since Perl 5.7.2, but otherwise can be downloaded from CPAN as part of the libnet package, see http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=libnet
Finally the package requires Pod::Usage, v1.14 or above, by Brad Appleton bradapp@enteract.com. Again this has been included in the base distribution since Perl 5.6.1, but can be downloaded seperately from CPAN as part of the PodParser package, see http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=PodParser
The package provides the following classes
Astro::ADS::Query
Astro::ADS::Result
Astro::ADS::Result::Paper
along with the following scripts which take advantage of the class functionality
adsquery
The package is availabe from CPAN http://www.cpan.org/ and from http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/aa/pages/computing/estar.html
Installation is automated using the ExtUtils::MakeMaker library
% perl Makefile.PL
% make
% make test
% make install
The core functionality of the module was written by Alasdair Allan aa@astro.ex.ac.uk, of the University of Exeter Astrophysics Group (http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/) as part of his work for the eSTAR project.
Additional functionality and the user space scripts were written by Tim Jenness timj@jach.hawaii.edu of the Joint Astronomy Centre (JAC) in Hawaii.
Use of this library implies acceptance of the terms and conditions of use of the Astrophysical Data Service (ADS) Abstract Service, for full details see http://adswww.harvard.edu/use.html
This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place,Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA