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

I'm trying to write a perl script that will log into a particular site. There is a bug on the site that issues a bogus error (browser does not accept cookies), and username & passwords are cleared. But if I manually re-enter the username and password, my logi is successful.

I'm trying to emulate this behavior in perl by testing for the cookies error after my initial login attempt, I repeat the following: 
$mech->set_fields(Username => $username, Password => $password);
$mech->submit();
$output_page = $mech->content();

[download]
The resulting behavior is the site responds as if I did not repopulate the username and password fields and simply clicked on the Login button.

During debugging, I discovered that if I invoke the click() method prior to initially populating the username and password fields, they don't get filled in by the set_fields() method.

How can I repopulate fields on the same webpage after invoking the click or submit methods?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Cannot re-enter username, password into login form
by Anonymous Monk on Aug 01, 2014 at 22:48 UTC

    How can I repopulate fields on the same webpage after invoking the click or submit methods? <?i>

    As documented?

    What module are you using? What website are you visiting?

[reply]
      I'm using WWW::Mechanize

      Here is a snippet of code: 
      $mech->get($url);
$mech->form_name('loginform');
$mech->set_fields(user_login => $username, user_pass => $password);
$mech->click();
my $output_page = $mech->content();

if ($output_page =~ m/cookies/) {
   $TestStatus = 1;
   ok( $TestStatus , "Login failed - Browser not  enabled to accept co
+okies error");

# Try logging in again - should work this time...

   $mech->get($url);
   $mech->form_name('loginform');
   $mech->set_fields(user_login => $username, user_pass => $password);
   $mech->click();
   }

      [download]

      The first attempt fails and I get the cookies error, which tells me that I'm populating the user_login and user_pass fields. But after invoking the click method, I can't seem to repopulate the fields - at least that's how the site is behaving...
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[d/l]
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