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

Hi all

I was amazed by the support i have got from you all..for my first query..Thanx and its solved by your help..thanx for all monks who supported me..


Now i have another question.. unlike some html pages.. if you want to parse a page with embed flash on it then how to do that??? say a url be "https://video.cricinfo.tv/video_player.aspx?" then if you write below code then it was not worked since if you enter that page its completely flash player embed on it... so can any body help me to parse that page i.e get into that page ....

use WWW::Mechanize; use LWP::Simple; use HTTP::Cookies; $url="https://video.cricinfo.tv/video_player.aspx"; $cookiefile = 'cookies.txt'; $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new(File => $cookiefile, autosave =>1); $m = WWW::Mechanize->new( autocheck => 1 ); $m->cookie_jar($cookie_jar); $m->get($url); open(FD,">a.html"); print FD $m->content; close(FD);

this gives the source code only but i can't parse only because it has something like
var so = new SWFObject("/espn360.swf", "mymovienameid", "1024", "730", "9", "#000000");"
and all so again i tried of the url
https://video.cricinfo.tv/espn360.swf"
since its a flash url but the source code was horrible it gave
a.html: Macromedia Flash data (compressed), version 8
so can any body help me to solve this...
to parse this site....

please monks ...

you can also mail me @ shekarkcb@gmail.com


thanx,
shekar

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Parsing Pages That contain Flash player Embedded on them
by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 16, 2008 at 13:51 UTC

    As bart says, of course it looks horrible - it's Flash!

    But seriously, the file you downloaded is a Macromedia Flash file, not a HTML file. A Flash file is a small program, which is hard to produce in Perl and even harder to parse. So, you're basically on your own - I recommend looking at what other data the flash program downloads, by using a HTTP sniffer.

Re: Parsing Pages That contain Flash player Embedded on them
by marto (Cardinal) on Jun 16, 2008 at 13:56 UTC
    'since its a flash url but the source code was horrible it gave'

    What are you trying to achieve? Do you know what a shockwave flash file is? You mention the term Parse, are you really trying to parse a flash file or are you trying to mirror somebody's website content?

    See How do I post a question effectively?

    Martin
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Re: Parsing Pages That contain Flash player Embedded on them
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 16, 2008 at 13:53 UTC
Re: Parsing Pages That contain Flash player Embedded on them
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 16, 2008 at 13:47 UTC
[OT]: How Flash ruins everything
by educated_foo (Vicar) on Jun 16, 2008 at 23:31 UTC
    This, my friends, is why Flash is evil: it breaks the web. The web today would be useless without search engines and spiders, and the fact that it's mostly just text makes such things possible (or at least easier) to write. Flash utterly breaks that, which is why I fear our wannabe Adobe overlords and their brave new Flash/PDF/Javascript world.