Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am trying to use WWW::Mechanize to submit a form which uses an image as a submit button without name. I am using the script below but no luck. Any advice? Thanks. 
Here is the form 

<form method=get 
      name=form1 
      action="http://address
 .
 .
 .
  
 
          <input type="image" 
               alt=" Go " 
               src="http://address/image.gif" 
               border=0> 
          <a href="http://address"> 
          <img src="http://whatever/f-clear0.gif" border=0 
       alt="Clear"></a> 
        
</form> 

Here is the code:

use WWW::Mechanize;

my $agent = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$agent->get('http://address');
$agent->form(1);
$agent->field(qw(request test));
#tried this but it didn't work
#$agent->find_image(alt => " Go ");
#$agent->click();
$agent->submit("Go");

print $agent->{content};

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Re: WWW::Mechanize and unnamed images
by jbrugger (Parson) on Mar 02, 2006 at 05:24 UTC
    When you just want to submit a form, use: 
    # Submits the page, without specifying a button to click. Actually, no
+ button is clicked at all.
# This used to be a synonym for $mech->click("submit"), but is no long
+er so.

$mech->submit()

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    If you want to click a button that isn't named, try to use the 
    $mech->click_button( ... )
# number => n
#Clicks the nth button in the current form. Numbering starts at 1.

# value => value
# Clicks the button with the value value in the current form.

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    "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise." - Larry Wall.
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Re: WWW::Mechanize and unnamed images
by monarch (Priest) on Mar 02, 2006 at 05:18 UTC
    You need to learn more about HTML (check out HTML Help which is a great page about HTML tags).

    Looking at your HTML it is clear that your form has an action (<form .. action=".." ..>). That action specifies what web page WWW::Mechanize should fetch when you submit the form.

    Now looking at your image (<input type="image"...) it is clear that this image is not designed to actually perform any function by itself. It is likely that a javascript function elsewhere has tied itself to this image to make it clickable. Whatever that may be, the important information is already encoded in the form (the action as I mentioned earlier).

    So just try this code instead while paying particular attention to the <form ...> tag:

      use WWW::Mechanize;
  use strict;

  my $agent = WWW::Mechanize->new();
  $agent->get('http://address');
  $agent->form_name('form1');
  $agent->field('request', 'test');
  $agent->submit(); # will go to the form's action URL
  print( $agent->response->content() );

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      Now looking at your image (<input type="image"...) it is clear that this image is not designed to actually perform any function by itself. It is likely that a javascript function elsewhere has tied itself to this image to make it clickable.
      No, <input type="image"> behaves the same as <input type="submit">, just instead of being a plain button w/text, it's whatever image you specify. So it does perform a function (submit form) by itself -- no javascript is involved. Note it also submits the coordinates of the image that were clicked, too.

      The HTML Help page is here: INPUT - Form Input (search for "graphical submit" to get to the right place in the page)
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