I need to see all the packages that are available to install via a command so I can use it in another program. I tried dpkg -l but it only gives the installed packages. The output is like this:

ii apache2-utils 2.2.22-1ubuntu1 utility programs for webservers

It is so similar to Synaptic output, so is there a common command like this am I missing? apt-cache is helpful but not it is not in the above format.