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

Hi everyone!

I'm working a new job and have a need to automate some processes. I love PERL and have used it in the past but I'm rusty and need some guidance. What I am looking to do is write some scripts that can login to several differnet websites, run some conditionals, and based on the result, manipulate data and make updates/changes to these sites. I'm running on a Windows 7 platform.

I could conceivably create my own web server on my laptop and use it as my platform. However, maybe a standalone script(s) would be better than creating a web server. Not sure what modules would be beneficial for doing this either.

So what would be your suggestions for approaching this?Should I use strawberry perl? What type of perl should I install on my machine? Should I go through a ISP like hostgator and devlop it on their servers?

Also, I should note that all of the sites are using https, but I do have the user/passwords for them.

Thanks in advance!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Need Guidance for Web Scripting
by CountZero (Bishop) on Mar 09, 2013 at 20:10 UTC
    Strawberry Perk is a good choice if you develop on Windows-machines.

    You do not have to be "on" the server if you want to interact with a website. If you can reach the website through a browser from your machine, you can do it with Perl too.

    There are a lot of modules that allow interaction with websites. The LWP-series of modules is well known for this.

    CountZero

    A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

    My blog: Imperial Deltronics
[reply]
      Thank you friend. I will start there. :)
[reply]
Re: Need Guidance for Web Scripting
by Gangabass (Vicar) on Mar 10, 2013 at 08:03 UTC
    I'm strongly recommend to start with WWW::Mechanize -- this is a proper subclass of LWP::UserAgent so you can do everything that LWP can do and much much more.
[reply]
      Great! I will try that! Thanks friend! :)
[reply]

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