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mmittiga17 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi All, I have a lot of scripts I have written to pull data from HTTPS websites. I am running into a problem with sits that use flash. Anyone know is it possible to get data from sites that use flash using LWP? Any way to make lwp fake it is flash enabled browser? Thanks in advance!

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Re: LWP and Flash
by tilly (Archbishop) on Jan 12, 2011 at 19:25 UTC
    To get the flash content you just have to parse the html, find the tag that has the flash content, and download it. Same as you would with other kinds of content, such as images.

    But you will get the content as a binary blob. Interpreting it is a much harder problem. (Which is entirely not in LWP's domain of expertise.)

Re: LWP and Flash
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 12, 2011 at 19:25 UTC

    Anyone know is it possible to get data from sites that use flash using LWP?

    LWP doesn't "get sites". It performs HTTP requests, HTTPS requests, etc. It can perform more or less any HTTP and HTTPS request a browser can make, include those that get .swf files.

    Any way to make lwp fake it is flash enabled browser?

    I don't see why an HTTP server would care about whether a client is "flash enabled" or not, but it's not outside the realm of possibilities. If you're dealing with a server that makes that determination, you'll have to tell us how it makes that determination since HTTP doesn't provide a builtin means specifying this. If it's based on the agent string, you can tell LWP to use the same agent string as the browser of your choice.

Re: LWP and Flash
by zentara (Archbishop) on Jan 12, 2011 at 22:17 UTC