Mechnize, Links and Downloads

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

Hello dear monks,

I need some help in order to download a file. I am not sure if it is possible at all.

Manually in order to see the page I mean.

site: http://cs3-hq.oecd.org/scripts/hpv/
search
by CAS Number : 50000
click link

Now it should open a page containing a link with a pdf called 50000.pdf. This is what I want to download. I never see the pdf as content of the $mech. And the link is named "#". Why? Could you please point me to my mistake.

Thank you very much.

    my $oecd = URI->new('http://cs3-hq.oecd.org/scripts/hpv/DetailProd
+uit_Contenu.asp?CASNUM='."$_");
    $mech->get($oecd);
    #$mech->follow_link(url_regex => qr/\.pdf/);
    #my $url = $mech->find_link(text_regex => qr/\.pdf/);
    my @links = $mech->find_all_links();
    for(@links)
    {
        print $_->url(), "\n";
        print $_->text(), "\n";    
    }
[download]

Comment on Mechnize, Links and Downloads Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Mechnize, Links and Downloads by almut (Canon) on Aug 16, 2007 at 14:55 UTC
The link makes use of Javascript: `<a href="#" onclick="javascript: ouverturePopup('Status/DownloadFile.A +SP?CASNUM=50000&StatusCode=SIARC&DataNo=1'); return false;">50000.pdf +</a>` [download] In other words, you should be able to retrieve this particular PDF via the URL: `http://cs3-hq.oecd.org/scripts/hpv/Status/DownloadFile.ASP?CASNUM=5000 +0&StatusCode=SIARC&DataNo=1` [download] As this doesn't look too complicated to extract, you might get around having to execute the Javascript in this case...	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Mechnize, Links and Downloads by Anonymous Monk on Aug 17, 2007 at 07:19 UTC
Thank you very much. This was exactly what I wanted. Forgot about Javascript.	[reply]
Re: Mechnize, Links and Downloads by marto (Cardinal) on Aug 16, 2007 at 14:51 UTC
This sort of question gets asked frequently here. This site uses JavaScript to open a window containing the PDF you are looking for.. WWW::Mechanize does not deal with JavaScript, as stated in the documentation. You could either use Win32::IE::Mechanize or Mozilla::Mechanize to get around this, or even better write some Perl code to work around this problem. Hope this helps. Martin	[reply]