I'm not sure that you understand what I am getting at. No intention of creating a pure perl browser, but the intention of the modules and bot programmers is to automate the scraping. The analogy you give is not the case here, as we are talking about the higher functionality layer... not the underlying code used. The modules advertise or imply their ability to automate this type of interaction, so going outside of it seems that either 1. the module is truly more limited, or 2. (most likely) I am not understanding a way to use it. Your answer, if I understand it, suggests that I would need to abandon a pure perl / automated solution. If so, so be it, but I want to make sure current perl mods can't. I am inclined to guess they can, because they claim JS/Ajax support and are known to handle button clicks within forms.
1. Yes, HTTP occurs and yes HTTP::Recorder deals with http. But the heart of the issue at hand is mechanization. Recorder does not mechanize the javascript button clicks, as mentioned in CPAN doc.
2. The intent is to do this programatically. So when I refer to needing a 3rd party browser tool to see and then mimic http of the button actions as "cheating", what I mean is that the very intention of these perl modules is to automate and handle browser interactions, including JS / clicks, robustly.
3. Now I could be misunderstanding you, completely. I am familiar with WWW::Mechanize (and some similar), but not WWW::Mechanize::Firefox, which perhaps has some kind of ability to utilize the LiveHttpHeaders plugin to do its own handling of button clicks. The way I read your suggestion is to use the firefox plugin to myself comb the logged http interactions, and then using Mechanize, etc to mimic the button click methods buy just plugging in the http I sniffed. My appologies if I'm not understanding correctly. And thanks again for the suggestions so far. I'm sure you are more experienced than I at this, so please bear with me if I'm misunderstanding.