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

I'm using WWW::Mechanize to enter data into a web page. How can I find out the name of the for and the name of the buttons? Any help would be appreciated, thanks. Here is the (slightly modidified to protect the site) HTML. 

<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-12
+52">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">


<title>The Submission Form</title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">

<base href="http://www.somewebsite.com/subdir/post.htm"><meta name="Mi
+crosoft Theme" content="safari-color-change 100, default"></head>

<body bgcolor="#000000" text="#CCCC99" link="#FFFF00" vlink="#FF0000" 
+alink="#FFFFFF"><!--mstheme--><font face="trebuchet ms, arial, helvet
+ica">




<p> </p>

<h1><!--mstheme--><font color="#CCCC66">The Place<!--mstheme--></font>
+</h1>

<p>
 [ 



<a href="index.htm" target="_top">Contents</a> | 




<a href="post.htm" target="_top">Post</a>

 ]
</p>


<!--msthemeseparator--><p align="center"><img src="_themes/safari-colo
+r-change/safsepd.gif" width="600" height="10"></p>

<h3><!--mstheme--><font color="#CC6600"><tt>POST ARTICLE</tt><!--msthe
+me--></font></h3>

<form method="POST" action="_vti_bin/shtml.exe/post.htm?68" webbot-act
+ion="--WEBBOT-SELF--">
    <input TYPE="hidden" NAME="VTI-GROUP" VALUE="0">

    <p> 
    <strong>Subject:</strong><br>
    <input type="TEXT" name="Subject" size="50" value="Re: test2"> <br
+>

    <strong>Comments:</strong><br>
    
    <textarea name="Comments" rows="6" cols="50"></textarea> <br>

    <br>

    
    <input type="SUBMIT" value="Post Article"> <input type="RESET" val
+ue="Reset Form"> </p>
</form>





<!--msthemeseparator--><p align="center"><img src="_themes/safari-colo
+r-change/safsepd.gif" width="600" height="10"></p>


<h5><!--mstheme--><font color="#CC9933">Last changed: October 08, 2003


<!--mstheme--></font></body>
</html>

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: WWW::Mechanize & HTML
by jasonk (Parson) on Oct 08, 2003 at 13:31 UTC

    You can find the name by looking for the name="something" tag in the form or input tags, but as you have discovered, there is no requirement for them to be named at all, the form you have here doesn't have a name. WWW::Mechanize also lets you select forms by number, rather than name, so you can use $agent->form_number(1) to select the form you want to work with, and can just use $agent->submit() to submit the form, and just ignore the buttons altogether.

    We're not surrounded, we're in a target-rich environment!
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      Great! Thank you very much. I was trying to use click('button_name') or just click() it wasn't working. I'll try submit().

      Also, I tried using the readmore tag followed by code then my code block followed by a /code tag and then a /readmore (with <> around them of course) and the readmore didn't work. Do youo know what I did wrong? Thanks again.

[reply]
      click() and submit() failed and now I know why. I used response() to get the following error message. 
      <HEAD><TITLE>An Error Occurred</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>An Error Occurred</H1>
401 Authorization Required
</BODY>
</HTML>

      [download]
      When I get() the form I do it like this. 
      get("http://name:password\@www.site.com/page.htm")

      [download]
      So I should already be authorized right? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Actually the get looks like this 
        get("http://name:pwd\@www.site.com/subdir/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/post.htm?
+106");

        [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

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