The Code

Here's a classic piece of Perl code to produce a Google box as a regular text file filled with garden-variety HTML code, suitable for incorporating into any web page.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# google_box.pl
# A classic Google box implementation.
# Usage: perl google_box.pl <query> <# results>
     
# Your Google API developer's key.
my $google_key='insert key here';
     
# Location of the GoogleSearch WSDL file.
my $google_wdsl = "./GoogleSearch.wsdl";
     
use strict;
     
use SOAP::Lite;
     
# Bring in those command-line arguments.
@ARGV == 2
  or die "Usage: perl googlebox.pl <query> <# results>\n";
my($query, $maxResults) = @ARGV;
$maxResults = 10 if ($maxResults < 1 or $maxResults > 10);
     
# Create a new SOAP::Lite instance, feeding it GoogleSearch.wsdl.
my $google_search = SOAP::Lite->service("file:$google_wdsl");
     
# Query Google.
my $results = $google_search -> 
  doGoogleSearch(
    $google_key, $query, 0, $maxResults, "false", "",  
    "false", "", "latin1", "latin1"
  );
     
# No results?
@{$results->{resultElements}} or die "no results";
     
print join "\n",
  map( { 
    qq{<a href="$_->{URL}">} .
    ($_->Capture Google Results in a Google Box || $_->{URL}) . 
    qq{</a> <br />} 
  } @{$results->{resultElements}} );

Save the code to a file called google_box.pl. Be sure to replace insert keyhere in the seventh line with your personal Google API key.