Sending data to a cgi-form

New Novice has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi,

I want to write a script that automatically sends a request to a cgi-driven database and then processes the result. The problem is that I find a lot of descriptions on who to write a cgi-script that lets the user enter data, click on buttons, etc. and then process this input and more via environment variables - but I want to know how to do it the other way around. How do I automatically manipulate variables of an interactive site?

Presumably, this can be done by extracting (manually) the input variable name from the html code of the target page and then sending the parameters via post or get. But how does this work exactly?

Sorry for asking such a basic question, a link to a site explaining this would be great (as I only found sites explaining how to process data input but not to simulate data input).

Comment on Sending data to a cgi-form

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Re: Sending data to a cgi-form by pelagic (Priest) on Sep 23, 2004 at 15:24 UTC
New Novice, you definitely want to look into WWW::Mechanize which can do exactly what you want. pelagic	[reply]
Re^2: Sending data to a cgi-form by New Novice (Sexton) on Sep 27, 2004 at 13:31 UTC
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Re: Sending data to a cgi-form by punkish (Priest) on Sep 23, 2004 at 15:49 UTC
When starting something, the best place to start is the beginning. The following link contains a few suggestions for your first steps on a long and exciting journey. http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/programming/perl_cgi/ Make sure to come back from time to time and tell us monks about your progress, ask questions, seek glimmers of enlightenment, and even share some love.	[reply]