Does anyone have any experience pulling MS Excel files off of the web? I have been unable to get a valid Excel file from a website. Here is what happens (Windows 2000 box, ActiveState perl):
  1. Connect to server, then authenticate
  2. Use LWP to GET the file of interest.
  3. Save the file to disk
When I do this, the file cannot be read by Excel, nor will ParseExcel read the file. I compared the downloaded file to a "reference" file that I created by opening the Excel file in IE & saving to disk. The files are very, very similar, but different. Is there some special MS foo that is tripping me up, or am I missing something obvious like character encodings? Here is an abbrviated version of my code: 
use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP;
use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;
my $url = 'http:// blah blah /login.asp';

my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$browser->cookie_jar({});
my $response = $browser->post( $url,
                   [ 'password' => 'pass',
                 'userid' => 'user',
                 'btnsubmit' => 'Submit',
                   ]
                 );
$url = "http://blah blah getdata_RS.asp";
$response = $browser->get( $url );

my $exceldata =  $response->content;
open (FILE, "> c:\\test.xls");

[download]
The file that I am pulling down is only one sheet, not an entire workbook. Thanks!

In reply to Download Excel File off web by jimmyredboy

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