In my experience, you will have to look at the HTTP requests that go over the wire. The only "hands-off" solution that works well for my case is WWW::Mechanize::Firefox, but that should be no surprise as I wrote it. But even with WWW::Mechanize::Firefox, if you care for efficiency or speed, you will have to look at what HTTP requests are made and which requests can be skipped. Also, when automating a Javascript-heavy site, you will have to look at the Javascript to find out what functions to call instead of clicking elements on the page, to get the results in a more formatted way.

My reason for automating Firefox is that Firefox is a supported and interactive platform. If a website does not work with Firefox, it's the websites fault, not the fault of my program. And I can watch Firefox as it navigates through the website, which is a plus while developing the automation.

Of course, the module needs Firefox, and Firefox needs a display. There is PhantomJS, but so far I found the (lack of) model of interaction between the browser Javascript and the Javascript within the page lacking.

In reply to Re^9: Scraping Ajax / JS pop-up by Corion
in thread Scraping Ajax / JS pop-up by Monk-E

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