Google Hacks

Hack 88 GooPoetry

Google's got the soul of a poet, or at least knows how to toss a good word salad.

Perhaps you didn't realize it, but with a little help from a hack, Google can churn out poetry that will bring a tear to your eye. Okay, perhaps not. But Google sure can mix a mean word salad.

This hack takes a query and uses random words from the titles returned by the query to spit out a poem of random length. The user can specify a poetry "flavor," adding words to the array to be used. The flavors in this version of the hack include: hippie, beatnik, and Swedish Chef. Here's a paean to the O'Reilly Camel Book, flavored by Shakespeare:

-- 3rd alas! to the
O'Reilly thee |
2nd Camel Book
Catalog: | hither Book Welcome oreilly.com Edition --
2000 Programming The
-- Dictionary] Book sirrah alas!
-- Perl 2000 2nd
2000 node: Camel Dictionary] Better node: Jargon oreilly.com
thee thee -- oreilly.com Programming 2nd oreilly.com

88.1 The Code

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# goopoetry.cgi
# Generates a mean word salad.
# goopoetry.cgi is called as a CGI with form input

# Your Google API developer's key
my $google_key='insert key here';

# Location of the GoogleSearch WSDL file
my $google_wdsl = "./GoogleSearch.wsdl";

# Number of lines per poem
my $numlines = 10;

# Number of words per line
my $numwords = 6;

use strict;

use SOAP::Lite;
use CGI qw/:standard/;

my $flavors = {
  'Hippie' => ['wow', 'groovy man!', 'far out!', 'Right on!', 
    'funky', 'outta sight', 'Like,','peace out!', 
    'munchies'],
  'Beatnik' => ['daddy-o', 'long gone', 'hepcat', 'jazzy',
    'cool', 'hip','cool','jazzman','zoot'], 
  'Shakespeare' => ['thee', 'hark!', 'forsooth,', 'alas!', 'sirrah', 
    'hither', 'hence'],
  'Swedish Chef' => ['bork bork bork!', 'hmdordeborkbork', 'BORK!', 
    'hrm de hr', 'bork?', 'hur chikee chikee'],
  'Default' => ['...', '!', '(?)', '---']
};

print
  header(  ),
  start_html("GooPoetry"),
  h1("GooPoetry"),
  start_form(-method=>'GET'),
  'Query: ', textfield(-name=>'query'),
  br(  ),
  'Flavor: ', popup_menu(
    -name=>'flavor', -values=>[keys %$flavors], -default=>'Default'
  ),
  br(  ),
  submit(-name=>'submit', -value=>'Toss that Word Salad'),
  end_form(), p(  );

if (param('flavor')) {
  my $google_search = SOAP::Lite->service("file:$google_wdsl");

  # Create an array for the random words
  my @words;
  # Mix in the flavored words
  push @words, @{$flavors->{param('flavor')}};

  # Query Google
  my $results = $google_search -> 
    doGoogleSearch(
      $google_key, param('query'), 0, 10, "false", "", "false",
      "", "latin1", "latin1"
    );

  # Glean and clean title words from results
  foreach my $result (@{$results->{'resultElements'}}) {
    $result->{title} =~ s!\n!!g; # drop spurious newlines
    $result->{title} =~ s!!!g; # drop all HTML tags
    push @words, split /\s+/, $result->{title};
  }

  for (my $l = 0; $l <= $numlines; $l++) {
    # Randomly decide the number of words in this sentence
    for (my $w = 0; $w <= int(rand($numwords))+3; $w++) {
      print lc $words[rand(scalar @words)] . ' ';
    }
    print "";
  }
}

88.2 Running the Hack

Point your browser at the CGI script, fill out the form, and click the "Toss that Word Salad" button. Figure 7-1 shows an example.

Figure 7-1. Google-generated poetry

88.3 Hacking the Hack

You may have noticed that this code does not have an error message, if the query submitted does not get any results. That's on purpose; because there is always a "flavor" array pushed into the "words" array, even a query that gets no results will create a poem. For example, if you searched for an query that got no results, and were using the "beatnik" flavor, you'd get a poem with lines like this:

cool jazzy
long gone jazzman long gone hepcat zoot
cool zoot zoot jazzman hepcat jazzman zoot long gone

As you can see, it's just words from the beatnik flavor repeated over and over, as there's nothing else in the @words array.

You can add flavors to your heart's content. Simply add another entry in the $flavors data structure. Say, for instance, you wanted to add a "Confused" flavor; you'd add the following bolded line just after the opening my $flavors = {:

my $flavors = {
  'Confused' => ['huh?', 'duh', 'what?', 'say again?', 
    'do what now?', 'wubba?'],
  'Hippie' => ['wow', 'groovy man!', 'far out!', 'Right on!', 
    'funky', 'outta sight', 'Like,','peace out!', 
    'munchies'],
  'Beatnik' => ['daddy-o', 'long gone', 'hepcat', 'jazzy',
    'cool', 'hip','cool','jazzman','zoot'], 
  'Shakespeare' => ['thee', 'hark!', 'forsooth,', 'alas!', 'sirrah', 
    'hither', 'hence'],
  'Swedish Chef' => ['bork bork bork!', 'hmdordeborkbork', 'BORK!', 
    'hrm de hr', 'bork?', 'hur chikee chikee'],
  'Default' => ['...', '!', '(?)', '---']
};

That's all there is to it. You've successfully added a new flavor to the hack.

You can also change the number of lines and maximum words per line of the generated poem by changing the values of $numlines and $numwords, respectively. I did find, however, that the defaults are pretty optimal for creating interesting "poetry"; less than 10 lines and there wasn't much flavor, more than 10 and it repeated itself far too often.