WWW::WolframAlpha

In brief

This Raku package provides access to the answer engine Wolfram|Alpha, [WA1, Wk1]. For more details of the Wolfram|Alpha's API usage see the documentation, [WA2].

Remark: To use the Wolfram|Alpha API one has to register and obtain an authorization key.

Installation

Package installations from both sources use zef installer (which should be bundled with the "standard" Rakudo installation file.)

To install the package from Zef ecosystem use the shell command:

zef install WWW::WolframAlpha

To install the package from the GitHub repository use the shell command:

zef install https://github.com/antononcube/Raku-WWW-WolframAlpha.git

Usage examples

Remark: When the authorization key, auth-key, is specified to be Whatever then the functions wolfam-alpha* attempt to use the env variable WOLFRAM_ALPHA_API_KEY.

The package has an universal "front-end" function wolfram-alpha for the different endpoints provided by Wolfram|Alpha Web API.

(Plaintext) results

Here is a result call:

use WWW::WolframAlpha;
wolfram-alpha-result('How many calories in 4 servings of potato salad?');

Simple (image) results

Here is a simple call (produces an image):

wolfram-alpha-simple('What is popularity of the name Larry?', format => 'md-image');

Remark: Pretty good conjectures of Larry Wall's birthday year or age can be made using the obtained graphs.

Full queries

For the so called full queries Wolfram|Alpha returns complicated data of pods in either XML or JSON format; see "Explanation of Pods".

Here we get the result of a full query and show its (complicated) data type (using "Data::TypeSystem"):

use Data::TypeSystem;

my $podRes = wolfram-alpha-query('convert 44 lbs to kilograms', output => 'json', format => 'hash');

deduce-type($podRes)

Here we convert the query result into Markdown (data-translation can be also used):

wolfram-alpha-pods-to-markdown($podRes, header-level => 4):plaintext;

Command Line Interface

Playground access

The package provides a Command Line Interface (CLI) script:

wolfram-alpha --help

Remark: When the authorization key argument "auth-key" is specified set to "Whatever" then wolfram-alpha attempts to use the env variable WOLFRAM_ALPHA_API_KEY.

Mermaid diagram

The following flowchart corresponds to the steps in the package function wolfram-alpha-query:

References

[AAp1] Anton Antonov, Data::TypeSystem Raku package, (2023), GitHub/antononcube.

[WA1] Wolfram Alpha LLC, Wolfram|Alpha.

[WA2] Wolfram Alpha LLC, Web API documentation.

[Wk1] Wikipedia entry, WolframAlpha.