Can I use Perl to send POST data to forms that use MS FrontPage webbots?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi monks! I'd like to post data to some form created using MS FrontPage. This form has a webbot section like this:

<form method="POST" action="../_vti_bin/shtml.exe/info/index.htm">

<!--webbot bot="SaveResults"
startspan
s-email-format="TEXT/PRE"
b-email-label-fields="TRUE"
.....
s-email-address="some@host.com" -->
[download]

I am not sure that usual

my $req = new HTTP::Request 'POST','http://www.host.com/_vti_bin/shtml
+.exe/info/index.htm
[download]

shall pass all the data to such a form. Thanks.

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

Comment on Can I use Perl to send POST data to forms that use MS FrontPage webbots? Select or Download Code

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Re: Can I use Perl to send POST data to forms that use MS FrontPage webbots? by chromatic (Archbishop) on Apr 02, 2000 at 22:42 UTC
I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. The difference in this case is that there is code embedded in the web page. If the server is set up correctly, when it goes to serve the POST request, it will load the web page and (presumably) parse the code embedded within. The webbot will have access to the POSTed data and should be able to process it. The stuff on the client side should look the same -- it's just different on the server side. With that in mind, what happens when you try it?	[reply]
Re: Can I use Perl to send POST data to forms that use MS FrontPage webbots? by Anonymous Monk on Jul 03, 2000 at 00:57 UTC
The code you show for the page is the source code of the page, before it is being parsed by the FrontPage extensions in the server. The code that is then actually sent out to the browser will look more like a normal form, i.e. the `s-email-format="TEXT/PRE" b-email-label-fields="TRUE"` [download] and such is converted into HTML form elements. What you need to do is to select "Preview in Browser" in FrontPage and then "View source" in the browser to see how the form has been rendered by the FP extensions. There you'll find what parameter names and values you'll you need to emulate with your perl script. In order for "Preview in Browser" to work correctly with bots, it must go through a web server installed with frontpage extensions. In some setups it just reads the page from disk...	[reply] [d/l]


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