YouTube and Mechanize form submission

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

I'm trying to write a script for myself that when provided with a list of users from youtube I want to request as friends will automatically send the request. I'm baffled why the submit piece from Mechanize doesn't seem to work as I expect. This is my code snippet to submit the form:

    ...
    $mech->follow_link( text => "Add as Friend");

    my $page = $mech->content;
    my $hidden_id = $1 if $page =~ m/\<input type\=\"hidden\" name\=\"
+friend_id\" value=\"(.*)\"\>/;
    my $friend_id = 'http://youtube.com/my_friends_invite_user?friend_
+id=' .$hidden_id;

    # print "FRIEND ID: $friend_id\n";
    
    $mech->add_header( Referer => $friend_id );

    $mech->form_number(3);

    my $form = $mech->form_number(3);
        $form->find_input('friend_id')->readonly(0);
        $mech->set_fields(friend_id => $hidden_id);
    
        $mech->field('group', 'Friends' );

    $mech->click_button(name => 'action_invite');
[download]

Everything looks like it gets set properly but it never actually submits the form. I've also posted the source code behind the webpage if that helps below:

<form method="post" action="my_friends_invite_user">
  <input type="hidden" name="friend_id" value="JMwzlfI6UQU">
    <tr>
      <td class="formLabel">Username:</td>
      <td class="formField"><a href="/profile?user=wasteofaces">wasteo
faces</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr valign="top">
      <td class="formLabel">Add As:</td>
      <td class="formField">
        <select name="group">
      <option value="">---</option>
          <option value="Family" >Family</option>
          <option value="Friends" SELECTED>Friends</option>
        </select>
        <div class="smallText">This person will be able to see the pri
+vate videos you share with these groups in addition to your public vi
+deos.
    </div>
    </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="formLabel">&nbsp;</td>
      <td class="formField"><input type="submit" name="action_invite" 
+value="Send Invite"></td>
    </tr>
  </form>
[download]

I'm obviously missing something so any and all suggestions are welcome.

Comment on YouTube and Mechanize form submission Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: YouTube and Mechanize form submission by pemungkah (Priest) on Sep 12, 2007 at 20:06 UTC
User agent would be my first guess. Many sites (Yahoo! included) do different things if they detect a user agent that says "hi, I'm not a real person, but a program". I know this well from trying to write automated test scripts. Use `$mech->agent_alias('Windows IE 6")` and space out your requests with `sleep 2` or so. This will be less likely to trigger the "dude, you are so not for real" checks.	[reply]
Re: YouTube and Mechanize form submission by mmmmtmmmm (Monk) on Sep 13, 2007 at 01:43 UTC
Usually just setting the agent name is enough to keep sites from blocking robots, but I also usually tell it to sleep with a random value between 2 and 6 seconds, instead of a hardcoded value, so that it looks more like a human. ----mmmmtmmmm	[reply]
Re: YouTube and Mechanize form submission by technojosh (Priest) on Sep 12, 2007 at 19:34 UTC
Everything looks like it gets set properly but it never actually submits the form Ok, I'll take a crack at it... Since you are running against a remote site, you probably don't have access to errors in the server log to tell you how the POST was handled. The html looks ok. I am wondering if, since you are running against a remote site, you are having trouble calling the action like `<form method="post" action="my_friends_invite_user">` [download] instead of going to the URL as in: `<form method="post" action="http://youtube.com/my_friends_invite_user">` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
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