What have you tried so far?

There are the LWP::UserAgent and HTTP::Request modules, which together allow you to make POST requests. There also is the WWW::Mechanize module, which acts more like a browser.

If you just want to fire off a single POST request, then maybe my module, HTTP::Request::FromTemplate might be of help to you.

use strict;
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);

my $url = 'http://www.somewhere.com/cgi-bin/formular.cgi';

my $req = POST $url,
      [ Host            => 'myHost',
        Server          => 'Any Value',
        OtherField      => 'Some Value',
        OneMoreField    => 'whatever',
      ];


# Just a debug to STDOUT    
print "HTTP-FullRequest-Header: \n";
print $req->headers->as_string() , "\n";

print "HTTP-FullRequest-Header-Content: \n";
print $req->content() ,"\n";



# Now send it
use LWP::UserAgent;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();

my $response = $ua->request($req);

if ( $response->is_error() ) {
        print "Error-Code    : ", $response->code() ,    "\n";
        print "Error-Message : ", $response->message() , "\n";
}
else {
        print $response->content() , "\n";
}
[download]

Thanks for everyone's replies. I tried HTTP::Request::FromTemplate because that looked easiest but for some reason the request wasn't getting sent.

The last suggestion is semi-working for me in that the request is getting sent and the browser goes to the site, but I'm not actually getting the desired page.

I just wanted to check if I've set this up right with regards to the viewstate content below?

my $url = 'http://lhtbod-apdhz001.uk.ad.com/ess/SignUpAsEmployee.aspx'
+;
my $content='__VIEWSTATE=dDwxNTk4MDgzOTc1O3Q8O2w8aTwyPjs%2BO2w8dDw7bDx
+pPDE%2BOz47bDx0PDtsPGk8Mz47aTw1Pjs%2BO2w8dDxwPHA8bDxUZX
h0Oz47bDxBZG1pbmlzdHJhdG9yOiA3NTIzNTk7Pj47Pjs7Pjt0PHA8cDxsPFRleHQ7Pjts
+PDIyLzEyLzIwMDUgMTU6MTc7Pj47Pjs7Pjs%2BPjs%2BPjs%2BPjs%2
BBfgZ5IQIMSNKJj7%2BLszqPx1I1Co%3D&txtEmployeeID=84212&BtnSignUp=Sign+U
+p';

my $req = POST $url,
      [ 'Host'            => 'lhtbod-apdhz001.uk.ad.com',
        'User-Agent'    => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; e
+n-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5',
        'Accept'        => 'text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml
++xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0
.5',
        'Accept-Language'       => 'en-us,en;q=0.5',
        'Accept-Encoding'       => 'gzip,deflate',
        'Accept-Charset'        => 'ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7',
        'Keep-Alive'    => '300',
        'Connection'    => 'keep-alive',
        'Referer'       => 'http://lhrbod-apdhz001/ess/SignUpAsEmploye
+e.aspx',
        'Content-Type'  => 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
        'Content-Length'        => '309',
        'Content'       => $content,
      ];
[download]

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you are trying to accomplish, but... My boilerplate advice is this:

1. Use WWW::Mechanize.

2. I would try using a module such as HTTP::Recorder or WWW::Mechanize::Shell to record a successful manual form submission. The output of HTTP::Recorder, for instance, can be "dropped" right into your WWW::Mechanize scripts.

3. Another important tool for finding out what is really happening behind the scenes between server and browser is a protocol analyzer such as Ethereal.

4. Don't forget to view the source of the page you're trying to automate. A number of times, the solution has been as simple as making sure one is not trying to stick 10 characters in a field made for 8, or that one is referring to a control by its name, not its value.

Good luck,

Hi there.
There are issues with mechanize and ASP::Net.
You need to pass in the following hidden fields :
__EVENTTARGET
__EVENTARGUMENT
__VIEWSTATE,
__LASTFOCUS
see also cpan HTML::TreeBuilderX::ASP_NET.

hope that helps.
mike

bless(\sub {bless \$this,&$that;},"Cool");