For various reasons, I am trying to use Perl to drive Internet Explorer as a user agent for testing a webserver. I am using this in apposition (note: apposition, not opposition) to LWP::UserAgent for several reasons. I am trying to build up a toolkit of overlapping technologies. It has been suggested to me that this might be a good thing to do if there is a lot of Javascript involved (and there is), moreover I am finding that driving IE this way has gotten me around whatever problems are slowing me down in LWP::UserAgent. Sure, I should learn how to use LWP::UserAgent better, but this is a tactical situation.

Microsoft describes their interface for a method called Navigate: 
object.Navigate( _
    url As String, _
    [Flags As Variant,] _
    [TargetFrameName As Variant,] _
    [PostData As Variant,] _
    [Headers As Variant])

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I have used this joyfully so far, but only with the first param, which is the URL. So, now I now need to use the PostData and Headers, and am having only sorrow in using anything beyond the first param. I thought it might have been some kind of lost-in-translation from VBA to Perl. I looked at
perldoc Win32::OLE
which says: 
$ex->Amethod("arg")->Bmethod->{'Property'} = "foo";
$ex->Cmethod(undef,undef,$Arg3);
$ex->Dmethod($RequiredArg1, {NamedArg1 => $Value1, NamedArg2 => $Value
+2});

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The program below illustrates my problem. When I try to use the first method, I believe I am passing everything as a GET. This does work, and takes me to the socks search results to dwell there 5 seconds. The other two instances seem like they should work too, one via positional parameters and the other via named parameter, for 5 seconds each. Alas, they take me to our 404 handling page, where a pained-looking woman expresses her displeasure at my attempt. 

use Win32::OLE qw(EVENTS);
use strict;

my $IE  = Win32::OLE->new("InternetExplorer.Application")
    || die "Could not start Internet Explorer.Application\n";
 

$IE->{visible} = 1;

$IE->Navigate("http://amos.shop.com/amos/cc/main/ccn_search/ccsyn/150/
+stid/6150608?search_form=&st=socks&sy=products&search_button.x=39&sea
+rch_button.y=12");
sleep 5;
$IE->Navigate("http://amos.shop.com/amos/cc/main/ccn_search/ccsyn/150/
+stid/6150608", undef, undef, "search_form=&st=socks&sy=products&searc
+h_button.x=39&search_button.y=12", undef);
sleep 5;;

$IE->Navigate("http://amos.shop.com/amos/cc/main/ccn_search/ccsyn/150/
+stid/6150608", {PostData=>"search_form=&st=socks&sy=products&search_b
+utton.x=39&search_button.y=12"});
sleep 5;

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In reply to Win32::OLE VBA to Perl Translation Question about Internet Explorer by sailortailorson

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