DuckDuckGo API

Maybe everyone else already knows this, but I just discovered that DuckDuckGo has an API with hooks into our favorite scripting languages! If we install the Perl, Python, and Ruby modules

$ cpanm WWW::DuckDuckGo
$ pip install duckduckgo
$ gem install duck-duck-go

then we can write Perl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use v5.14;
use warnings;
use WWW::DuckDuckGo;

my $zci = WWW::DuckDuckGo->new->zci(@ARGV);

say $zci->heading;
say $zci->abstract_text;

Python

#!/usr/bin/env python

import duckduckgo
import sys

zci = duckduckgo.query(' '.join(sys.argv[1:]))

print(zci.heading)
print(zci.abstract.text)

or Ruby

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require "duck_duck_go"

zci = DuckDuckGo.new.zeroclickinfo(ARGV.join(' '))

puts zci.heading
puts zci.abstract_text

that we could run like so

$ ./ddg Venture Bros
The Venture Bros.
The Venture Bros. is an American animated television series that
premiered on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on February 16, 2003.

There is also App::DuckDuckGo, which gives us a duckduckgo command that we could use along with the usual command line tools like grep

$ cpanm App::DuckDuckGo
...
$ duckduckgo 'Venture Bros' | grep Venture
The Venture Bros. (article)
Description: The Venture Bros. is an American animated television
series that premiered on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on February
16, 2003. (Wikipedia)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venture_Bros.

I'm guessing any of these is going to be a lot more fun to play with than a browser!