Question

I am trying to use Text::DocumentCollection in Perl. I want to be able to read text from a file handle and construct a document collection from that text, although I’m not sure if this is the intended use of this module.

The documentation refers to adding a “document” but I’m not sure what a document is. Is it a file? Can it be a string in a variable?

The following code returns an error:

use Text::DocumentCollection;

my $c = Text::DocumentCollection->new( file => 'test.db' );
$doc = 'test_doc';
$c->Add( 'doc1', $doc );

Error:

Can't locate object method "WriteToString" via package "test_doc" 
(perhaps you forgot to load "test_doc"?) at ...DocumentCollection.pm line 62.

What does it mean by “load” and what is a “package”?

Answer 1

From the tests included with the CPAN distribution, it looks like the 2nd argument to the Add method should be a reference to a Text::Document object, not a simple string.

For example, from t/collection.t

use Text::DocumentCollection;
use Text::Document;

my $d1 = Text::Document->new();
$d1->AddContent( ' danelle folta michelle pfeiffer ' );

my $d2 = Text::Document->new();
$d2->AddContent( ' danelle folta mary elizabeth mastrantonio ' );

my $c = Text::DocumentCollection->new( file => 't/collection.db');

$c->Add( 'a', $d1 );
$c->Add( 'b', $d2 );