How do I get data from a web API?

I'm pretty basic at Perl, and I need to make a project for my university.

I want to download data from certain link, it is JSON data, so I know I have to use JSON::Parse module from CPAN.

But how to download content of link to my Perl variable? Should I use LWP get()?

Solution

Aren't you supposed to be learning Perl if it's a university project?

Anyway, your program will look something like this. It uses the LWP::Simple module to fetch the JSON data, and then JSON::Parse to process it into a Perl data structure

I've used printed the author value from each item of the array, as requested in your comment

use strict;
use warnings 'all';

use LWP::Simple 'get';
use JSON::Parse 'parse_json';

use constant URL => 'http://a.wykop.pl/observatory/entries/appkey,dJ4w7fXYpL';

my $json = get URL or die "Unable to get JSON data";
my $data = parse_json($json);

print "Authors:\n";
print "  $_->{author}\n" for @$data;

output

Authors:
  Snurq
  AferaZaAfera
  Devest
  igorsped
  Matt23
  labla
  poprawnie-niepoprawny
  Parkero
  Speed666
  Xune
  Gasior9
  mikolajeq
  Aztek2201
  blogerbezbloga
  Pan_wons
  PanKaczucha
  NieznanyAleAmbitny
  dzika_kaczka_bez_dzioba
  ilili
  Bager
  bmbcz01
  hydrocyfolumpus
  acarter
  Doctor_Manhattan
  strumienzgor