update: Ah, I see. Are you going to be handling forms? I still say go with HTML::TokeParser::Simple, or possibly my HTML::LinkExtractor ;)

update: Look, this is interesting ;)

use JavaScript::SpiderMonkey;

my $jS = JavaScript::SpiderMonkey->new();

# Initialize Runtime/Context
$jS->init();


# create a new object, and set a method
my $document = $jS->object_by_path("document");

$jS->function_set("write", \&Write , $document);
$jS->function_set("writeln", \&WriteLn , $document);
$jS->property_by_path("document.location.href");


# Execute some code
my $rc = $jS->eval(q[

    document.location.href = append("http://", "www.perlmonks.org");

    document.write("URL is ", document.location.href);
    document.writeln("\nURL is ", document.location.href);

    function append(first, second) {
         return first + second;
    }

]);

# Get the value of a property set in JS
my $url = $jS->property_get("document.location.href");
print "the $url is\n";

$jS->destroy();

sub Write {
    print for @_;
}

sub WriteLn {
    print for @_;
    print "\n";
}
__END__
URL is http://www.perlmonks.org
URL is http://www.perlmonks.org
the http://www.perlmonks.org is
[download]

____________________________________________________
** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

I am actually attempting to write a generic web client using perl with response time measurement. Basically after I do an http get on the url (which retrieves the source (text)), I parse out all the image urls and then do a separate http get within the start handler. The problem is that I need to pass some of my own variables for error notification in case the image file is missing or the status response is other than "is_success".

You don't need to pass them, they can be coded into your start handler. It's part of your logic.

use HTML::Parser;

sub handle_img {
    my $attr = shift;
    if ($attr->{"src"} eq "perlmonks") {
        print "Oh, a monk\n";
    } else {
        print "Who are you?\n";
    }
}

sub start {

    my ($self, $tagname, $attr) = @_;
    if (lc($tagname) eq "img") {
        handle_img($attr);
    }
}

$p = HTML::Parser->new(start_h => [\&start, "self, tagname, attr"]);
$p->parse_file("a.html");
[download]