Twitch TMI, extract all users - regex

Question

I'm trying to extract all the user names from the source (https://tmi.twitch.tv/group/user/twitchpresents/chatters), but so far I'm only able to get like the first "name".
Goal is to get all the names into an array, and then just remove the "viewers", "admins", "staff", etc. names.
use strict;
use warnings;
my #listusers = userlist();
sub userlist {
my $url = "https://tmi.twitch.tv/group/user/twitchpresents/chatters";
my $array = get($url);
my #array2;
my $time = 0;
while ($time != 2){
my $mylist = (join "",grep(/"\s*(.*?)\s*"/, $array[$time])) =~ /"\s*(.*?)\s*"/;
print $1;
$time++;
}
return #array2;
}
print #listusers;

Answer 1

I assume that you get the page with get from LWP::Simple. Please always show relevant includes.
Since this is valid JSON, use a module for that
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature 'say';
use Data::Dump qw(dd);
use LWP::Simple;
use JSON;
my $data_json = get($url);
my $data = JSON->new->decode($data_json);
#dd $data;
my #names = #{ $data->{chatters}{moderators} }; # get "moderators"
say "#names";
# my #all_names = map { #$_ } values %{$data->{chatters}}; # or get all names
This prints the line: cliccer cuda hnlbot nixi93 scorpy0 somppe
I print "names" of moderators as an example of getting one category out; the commented out line gets all names in one array. Once you have a hashref there are various ways to extract what you need.
Your code seems to be trying to parse that JSON string. It is very easy with a module.
One can view complex data structures with Data::Dumper or such. I use Data::Dump.
Here JSON is used, which delegates to JSON::XS if installed or to the "pure Perl" (and slower) JSON::PP otherwise. Another option is Cpanel::JSON::XS.
For convenience, the structure printed by dd $data is
{
_links => {},
chatter_count => 15,
chatters => {
admins => [],
global_mods => [],
moderators => [
"cliccer",
"cuda",
"hnlbot",
"joffy95",
"nixi93",
"scorpy0",
"somppe",
],
staff => [],
viewers => [
"coldblood94",
"coldbot",
"gabenator",
"gharokk",
"reconcrusadershadow",
"scrubnubslulz",
"shai_the_panda",
"sonadourge",
],
},
}

Answer 2

I recommend that you use
Mojo::UserAgent
for this, as it contains a JSON decoder as well as an HTTP user agent and makes the code much more concise
I assume you want the names of all the different categories of chatters so that's what the map statement does: simply flattening all of the categories—admins, global_mods, moderators, staff, and viewers—into a single list
If anything goes wrong with the HTTP transfer then the subroutine will simply return an empty list, so you may want to add some proper error handling
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';
use Mojo::UserAgent;
my #list_users = chatters();
say for #list_users;
sub chatters {
my $url = 'https://tmi.twitch.tv/group/user/twitchpresents/chatters';
return unless my $data = Mojo::UserAgent->new->get($url)->res->json;
map { #$_ } values %{ $data->{chatters} };
}
output
girlonduty
moobot
ravager
100tesports
123mickeypr
13eebo
13urnxcalibur
2dmoody
2l33t
2tony79
3nticed
...