using LWP to POST multiple name/value pairs

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

This is more of a basic html/http question but it involves perl also. I am trying to get the contents of a web page that uses the POST method along with a few header/value pairs. When I put the following URL into my browser the resulting page is empty. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. My URL is based on the HTML form that I found in the source code. What am I missing? So this is how I am submitting my info:

http://x.x.x.x/cgi-bin/rgcgi?type=DisplayRoute&table=IPtoPSTNRoute&phonenumbermatch=A1212

This is what I see in an ethereal trace

Line-based text data: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

type=DisplayRoute$table=IPtoPSTNRoute&phonenumbermatch=A1212

Here is the html form:

Display IPtoPSTNRoute

<form action="rgcgi?action=IPtoPSTNRoute" method="post"> <input type="hidden" name="type" value="DisplayRoute"> <input type="hidden" name="table" value="IPtoPSTNRoute">Phonenumber Match: <input type="text" name="phonenumbermatch"> <input type="submit" value="Display Routes"></form>
This is what my code looks like

#!/usr/bin/perl
require LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Request::Common;

 my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
 $ua->timeout(10);
 $ua->env_proxy;
 $response = $ua->request(POST 'http://x.x.x.x/cgi-bin/rgcgi',
        [  type => DisplayRoute,
           table => IPtoPSTNRoute,
           phonenumbermatch => 'A1212' ]);

 if ($response->is_success) {
     print $response->content;  # or whatever
 }
 else {
     die $response->status_line;
 }
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Re: using LWP to POST multiple name/value pairs by izut (Chaplain) on Mar 08, 2006 at 03:15 UTC
First, make sure the rgcgi application understands GET, not just POST (in the case you're doing a GET request, calling the URL within the browser directly). Second, there's a missing parameter (action) you're not passing to rgcgi (as your html code shows us). It is missing in the Perl code you paste, too. `http://x.x.x.x/cgi-bin/rgcgi?action=IPtoPSTNRoute&type=DisplayRoute&ta +ble=IPtoPSTNRoute&phonenumbermatch=A1212` [download] Igor 'izut' Sutton your code, your rules.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: using LWP to POST multiple name/value pairs by nite_man (Deacon) on Mar 08, 2006 at 12:54 UTC
If you need to submit some form from Perl script there is a better way to do it - use module WWW::Mechanize: `use WWW::Mechanize; my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new(); $mech->submit_form( form_number => 3, fields => { username => 'mungo', password => 'lost-and-alone', } );` [download] --- Michael Stepanov aka nite_man It's only my opinion and it doesn't have pretensions of absoluteness!	[reply] [d/l]
Re: using LWP to POST multiple name/value pairs by zentara (Cardinal) on Mar 08, 2006 at 13:47 UTC
here is a "recipe" for post that works. Notice there are a few differences from your code. I'm not sure which is the problem, but I suspect it is the qw(POST) needs to be imported. `use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);` [download] #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; require LWP::UserAgent; # There are the LWP::UserAgent # and HTTP::Request modules, # which together allow you to make POST requests . Example 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] I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh	[reply] [d/l] [select]