Re: On being an IE browser, revisited

Often the pages I need to access involve Javascript, pop-up confirmation menus, file selection windows, and file download windows.

Have you looked at WWW::Mechanize? If you need to understand the finer points of Javascript/frame/cookie/et cetera interaction, have you looked at HTTP::Proxy?

What do you really want to do today, drive IE, or download web resources? Aren't you getting the means and the end confused?

Comment on Re: On being an IE browser, revisited

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Re: Re: On being an IE browser, revisited by rkg (Hermit) on Feb 28, 2004 at 22:36 UTC
Yes, I've worked with Mechanize quite a bit. I like it for interacting with nice vanilla web pages. I don't know how to use Mechanize to handle websites which pop up additional confirmation dialog screens. I'd prefer Mechanize to OLE + IE, but I've unable to drive complex websites with Mechanize. (Could be the problem is me, not Mechanize -- I'm well aware of that!) What I really want to is use automated intelligent perl scripts to interact with complex HTTP and HTTPS web apps designed for IE or NN. I'd rather not use OLE + IE -- using IE is a hack; IE has a big memory and processor footprint; IE is Win32-only; IE object docs are cryptic; etc. But (again maybe due to my lack of skill with LWP and Mechanize), OLE seems the most feasible option....	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: On being an IE browser, revisited by flyingmoose (Priest) on Feb 28, 2004 at 23:52 UTC
I was going to suggest one of the GuiTest modules, but that doesn't cover the screenscraping requirement. You'd have to code in capturing to a file. In general, I don't like anything that can't be done cleanly with a command line as well as a GUI, so perhaps it's time to get that pure-Perl javascript support into Mechanize (just kidding! just kidding!).	[reply]