www::mechanize long fields

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

I asked a question yesterday and it worked, sort of. I have a hash of field names and values (%forum_fields).

It does not submit my information if one of my fields contains a TON of text for some reason. In my message field ($forum_fields{'message') I have about 50 lines of URLs separated by

[url] url here [/url]
[download]

When I ditch this field from the hash prior to printing it to the forum via WWW::Mechanize it works. If I leave it on, it doesn't submit anything (and it doesn't error out).

Can anyone see why?

    $mech->submit_form(
        form_number => $search_form,
        fields      => \%forum_fields,
        
    )
[download]

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Re: www::mechanize long fields by Joost (Canon) on Jun 24, 2006 at 16:49 UTC
50 lines of urls doesn't seem like a lot to me. Are you sure the %forum_fields hash contains what you think it does? You can do this: `require Data::Dumper; print Data::Dumper::Dumper(\%forum_fields);` [download] right before calling submit_form to see. "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: www::mechanize long fields by Anonymous Monk on Jun 24, 2006 at 17:23 UTC
I am dead positive. When I do it with 10 URLS, it works 100% of the time. 50 URLS and it still works. But when I get higher, say 100 or so, it works 1/3 of the time or so. No errors, it just just post the message.	[reply]
Re^3: www::mechanize long fields by Joost (Canon) on Jun 24, 2006 at 17:43 UTC
Hmm... It could be a bug in WWW::Mechanize, but a quick scan of the bug reports doesn't show this being reported before (though I might have missed it). It might also be a server fault. Have you tried posting the same data via another mechanism (like, via a browser)? update: alternatively, can you make a smallish program that demonstrates the problem? "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply]
Re: www::mechanize long fields by TedPride (Priest) on Jun 25, 2006 at 17:40 UTC
Browsers often have problems if you try to submit more than a few K of text in a single field. How many bytes of data can you submit successfully?	[reply]