---
name: "WebService::CIA::Parser"
section: "3pm"
platform: "linux"
package: "libwebservice-cia-perl"
version: "1.4-4"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/WebService::CIA::Parser"
---

# WebService::CIA::Parser(3pm)

Parse pages from the CIA World Factbook

## NAME

WebService::CIA::Parser - Parse pages from the CIA World Factbook

## SYNOPSIS

```
  use WebService::CIA::Parser;
  my $parser = WebService::CIA::Parser->new;
  my $data = $parser->parse($string);
```

## DESCRIPTION

WebService::CIA::Parser takes a string of HTML and parses it. It will only give sensible output if the string is the HTML for a page whose URL matches `"https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/[a-z]{2}\.html"`

This parsing is somewhat fragile, since it assumes a certain page structure. It'll work just as long as the CIA don't choose to alter their pages.

## METHODS

- "new"

  Creates a new WebService::CIA::Parser object. It takes no arguments.

- "parse($html)"

  Parses a string of HTML take from the CIA World Factbook. It takes a single string as its argument and returns a hashref of fields and values.

  The values are stripped of all HTML. `"<br>"` tags are replaced by newlines.

  It also creates four extra fields: "URL", "URL - Print", "URL - Flag", and "URL - Map" which are the URLs of the country's Factbook page, the printable version of that page, a GIF map of the country, and a GIF flag of the country respectively.

## EXAMPLE

```
  use WebService::CIA::Parser;
  use LWP::Simple qw(get);
  $html = get(
    "https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/uk.html"
  );
  $parser = WebService::CIA::Parser->new;
  $data = $parser->parse($html);
  print $data->{"Population"};
```

## AUTHOR

Ian Malpass (ian-cpan@indecorous.com)

## COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2003-2007, Ian Malpass

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

The CIA World Factbook's copyright information page (\<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/contributor\_copyright.html\>) states:

```
  The Factbook is in the public domain. Accordingly, it may be copied
  freely without permission of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
```

## SEE ALSO

WebService::CIA