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

Good day fellow monks. I am having trouble with what I thought would be a simple task, getting a web image and saving it to a file using LWP. My first attempt: 
use feature ':5.10';
use LWP::UserAgent;
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $response = $ua->get('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ENIAC-chan
+ging_a_tube.jpg');
if ($response->is_success) {
    my $content = $response->decoded_content;
    open(OUT,">c:/temp/test.jpg") or die "Can't open output: $!";
    binmode OUT;
    print OUT $content;
    close OUT;
}
else {
    say "Fail"
}

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resulted in a successful get and a file written with "wide character" warning, but the file was not renderable.

So then I tried another method that I thought was designed for this very task: 

use LWP::Simple;
my $success = getstore('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ENIAC-chang
+ing_a_tube.jpg','c:\temp\test.jpg');
say $success;

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It gave a completion code of 200, no wide char warning, but also an unrenderable file.

I would prefer to use LWP:UserAgent for this rather then LWP::Simple since I want to get the images in the context of some other web retrieval. What am I doing wrong?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How to get/save image with LWP
by hippo (Archbishop) on Jul 07, 2021 at 20:57 UTC
    my $response = $ua->get('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ENIAC-changing_a_tube.jpg');

    Have you looked at that URL? It isn't an image which is why it is "not renderable". Use the actual URL of the image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/ENIAC-changing_a_tube.jpg/725px-ENIAC-changing_a_tube.jpg

    🦛

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      Good point. I saw it ended in .jpg so I assumed it was an image. Should have checked it manually. With the actual image link it works fine. Sorry for the cycles.
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Re: How to get/save image with LWP
by marto (Cardinal) on Jul 07, 2021 at 21:46 UTC

    A mojo based proof of concept. Feel free to add error checking etc:

    #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Mojo::UserAgent;

my $url = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ENIAC-changing_a_tube.jp
+g';

my $ua  = Mojo::UserAgent->new;
my $dom = $ua->get( $url )->res->dom; 
my $target = $dom->at('#file > a:nth-child(1) > img:nth-child(1)')->at
+tr('src');
$ua->get('https:' . $target)->res->save_to('target.jpg') ;

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Re: How to get/save image with LWP
by bliako (Abbot) on Jul 08, 2021 at 09:39 UTC

    In addiion to what others said, for raw content I would use $response->content;

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