The Perl Binding

Perl Binding Specification

The Perl binding is maintained by Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>

The ZOOM binding for Larry Wall's Perl language is completely specified and implemented. Full documentation for the binding can be found at search.cpan.org/~mirk/Net-Z3950-ZOOM

Canonical Sample Program

To give a flavour of the Perl binding, here is ZOOM's equivalent of the ``Hello World'' program: a tiny Z39.50 client that fetches and displays the MARC record for Farlow & Brett Surman's The Complete Dinosaur from the Library of Congress.

use ZOOM;
$conn = new ZOOM::Connection('z3950.loc.gov', 7090,
			     databaseName => "Voyager",
			     preferredRecordSyntax => "USMARC");
$rs = $conn->search_pqf('@attr 1=7 0253333490');
$rec = $rs->record(0);
print $rec->render();

Perl Binding Implementations

We currently have the following implementations of the Perl binding:

• Index Data's ZOOM module
• Mike Taylor's Net::Z3950 module [This predates the ZOOM Abstract API, and does not follow the Perl API described in the Index Data implementation. It is kept only for the convenience of existing applications.]