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

Dear fellow monks, I need to write an app that opens an Internet Explorer browser and navigates to a certain URL, say www.google.com. Then, I should grab whatever text the user enters in the search form of the page. Is there a way to do that through Win32::OLE?
Reading http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2005/04/21/win32ole.html has helped me navigate to the requested URL and see the events printed in my screen but I haven't found info on how to get the user typed info after the click of the 'Search' button.
Any help would be appreciated! 

use Tk;
use Win32;
use Win32::OLE qw(EVENTS);

$mw = new MainWindow (-title => "Application to replicate user data fr
+om web page");

# simple buttons to close IE or application
$mw->geometry("350x100+200+200");
$mw->resizable(0,0);
$customfont = "helvetica 10";

my $closeexlorerbutton = $mw -> Button(-text => "Close IE", 
    -font => "fixed 10 bold",
    -height => "1",
    -width => "14",
    -command =>\&closeie)
    -> place(-x => 200, '-y' => 50);

my $exitbutton = $mw -> Button(-text => "Cancel", 
    -font => "fixed 10 bold",
    -height => "1",
    -width => "14",
    -command =>\&exitProgram)
    -> place(-x => 50, '-y' => 50);

# open browser window and navigate to URL 

my $URL = "http://www.google.co.uk";
$IE  = Win32::OLE->new("InternetExplorer.Application")
    || die "Could not start Internet Explorer.Application, Win32::OLE:
+:LastError()\n";
Win32::OLE->WithEvents($IE,\&Event,"DWebBrowserEvents2");

$IE->{visible} = 1;

$IE->Navigate($URL);

Win32::OLE->MessageLoop();

MainLoop;

sub exitProgram {
    my $response = $mw -> messageBox(-message=>"Are you sure you want 
+to exit?",
              -type=>'yesno',
                -icon=>'question');
    if ( $response eq "yes" or $response eq "Yes" ) {      
        exit;
    }
}

[download]


Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Grab text from web page using Win32::OLE
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 10, 2008 at 14:09 UTC
[reply]
      Hi,
      Thanks for the link. I had a look at the Win32::IE::Mechanize module but can not find much info apart from the CPAN page. I found people use the following piece of code to e.g. set a field in the page and submit it 
      $ie->form_name( $name )
$ie->field($name,$value)

      [download]
      However, some initial tests have failed.
      I tried to use $name and $field that I found in the source code of the page http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ldb/ 
      <form id="ldb" name="ldb" method="get" action="/times_fares/ldb/;jsess
+ionid=10BE7B01E6848F6282BF503A24CD606F" onsubmit="kbSubmit(this)">
<div id="contentbg">
    <h1><em>Live</em> Departures &amp; Arrivals</h1>
    <div class="jpbody">
    
            
                <p>Please enter the entire, partial name or 3-letter c
+ode for your station.</p>
        
        
        
        <fieldset>
            <div class="station">
                
                    
                        <label for="mainStation">Station:</label>
                        <input id="mainStation" name="mainStation" typ
+e="text" value="" size="30"/>
                        <div id="mainStationAc" class="sacDiv"></div>

      [download]
      but it seems that the code snippet 
      my $url = "http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ldb/";
$ie = Win32::IE::Mechanize->new( visible => 1 );
$ie->get( $url );
my $formname = "ldb";
my $gotform = $ie->form_name( $formname );

      [download]
      returns an undefined value for $gotform. And, of course, the same applies when I try to set a field, e.g. mainStation to a value.
      Furthermore, this is not exactly what I want to do. I want to get the user input when the user submits the form and not set it myself. Is this possible through Win32::IE::Mechanize?

      Sorry for so many questions, but I am a total newbie in working with perl + web forms.
      Athanasia
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        An update on the previous.
        Working with another web page (in.yahoo.com) and adding a sleep 1 after the $ie->get($url) solved the problem of setting a value to a field and submitting the form correctly.
        However, the last question remains. Can I open a browser window through Win32::IE::Mechanize, then let the user type the input (e.g. some text for search) and grab this input in some way through this Perl module?

        Thanks in advance
[reply]

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