Simple JSON parsing using Perl

Some of the code above is extremely puzzling. I've just rewritten it with annotations for you.

#!/usr/bin/perluse LWP::Simple;                # From CPANuse JSON qw( decode_json );     # From CPANuse Data::Dumper;               # Perl core moduleuse strict;                     # Good practiceuse warnings;                   # Good practicemy $trendsurl = "https://graph.facebook.com/?ids=http://www.filestube.com";# open is for files.  unless you have a file called# 'https://graph.facebook.com/?ids=http://www.filestube.com' in your# local filesystem, this won't work.#{#  local $/; #enable slurp#  open my $fh, "<", $trendsurl;#  $json = <$fh>;#}# 'get' is exported by LWP::Simple; install LWP from CPAN unless you have it.# You need it or something similar (HTTP::Tiny, maybe?) to get web pages.my $json = get( $trendsurl );die "Could not get $trendsurl!" unless defined $json;# This next line isn't Perl.  don't know what you're going for.#my $decoded_json = @{decode_json{shares}};# Decode the entire JSONmy $decoded_json = decode_json( $json );# you'll get this (it'll print out); comment this when done.print Dumper $decoded_json;# Access the shares like this:print "Shares: ",      $decoded_json->{'http://www.filestube.com'}{'shares'},      "\n";

Run it and check the output. You can comment out the print Dumper $decoded_json; line when you understand what's going on.

How about using CURL command instead? (P.S.: This is running on Windows; make CURL changes for Unix systems).

$curl=('C:\\Perl64\\bin\\curl.exe -s http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=http://www.filestube.com');$exec=`$curl`;print "Output is::: \n$exec\n\n";# match the string "shares": in the CURL outputif ($exec=~/"shares":?/) {     print "Output is:\n$exec\n";    # string after the match (any string on the right side of "shares":)    $shares=$';     # delete all non-Digit characters after the share number    $shares=~s/(\D.*)//;     print "Number of Shares is: ".$shares."\n";} else {    print "No Share Information available.\n"}

OUTPUT:

Output is:{"http:\/\/www.msn.com":{"id":"http:\/\/www.msn.com","shares":331357,"comments":19}}Number of Shares is: 331357