in reply to Stay logged in between requests with WWW::Mechanize

Assuming the remote server is using cookies rather than session IDs (you can find out by closing your browser and then trying to reconnect without logging in: if you can, then it's cookies; otherwise, it's sessions), you need to not only specify the cookie_jar that you're using but to also load it. I find that setting the cookie_jar and "autosave" in the call to 'new()' causes W::M to spit out errors - so I tend to do it manually. Sample script follows: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;

my $cookie_file = "/tmp/cookies";
my $agent = WWW::Mechanize->new();

if (! -s $cookie_file){
    $agent->get("http://okopnik.com/PHP/other/cookies.php");
    # Save the cookie from this session
    $agent->cookie_jar->save($cookie_file);
}
else {
    $agent->cookie_jar->load($cookie_file);
    $agent->get("http://okopnik.com/PHP/other/cookies.php");
}

print $agent->content;

[download]

Assuming that you start with an empty "/tmp/cookies", this will populate it with a cookie the first time you run it (and show you a silly message that indicates that); subsequent runs will show that the cookie has been set and is active. Do note that the above PHP script has a fairly short cookie lifetime (2 minutes, if I recall correctly.) 

ben@Tyr:/tmp$ ./cookie_test 
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
   "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd" >
<html>
  <head><title>Cookies</title></head>
  <body>
    <p>This page comes with yummy cookies. It started at 1226629378, h
+as been<br>
        reloaded 0 times, and has lasted 0 seconds.</p>
  </body>
</html>

ben@Tyr:/tmp$ ./cookie_test
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
   "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd" >
<html>
  <head><title>Cookies</title></head>
  <body>
    <p>This page comes with yummy cookies. It started at 1226629378, h
+as been<br>
        reloaded 1 time, and has lasted 6 seconds.</p>
  </body>
</html>

[download]

--
"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."
-- B. L. Whorf

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Stay logged in between requests with WWW::Mechanize
by Cody Pendant (Prior) on Nov 14, 2008 at 03:20 UTC
    Assuming the remote server is using cookies rather than session IDs (you can find out by closing your browser and then trying to reconnect without logging in: if you can, then it's cookies; otherwise, it's sessions)

    I am confused. This doesn't make sense to me.

    The site is using cookies, I'm certain. It's not passing session vars around. But closing and restarting the browser would only prove whether there were cookies which expired at some later date, instead of at the end of the session. Those are the "remember me" type cookies.

    And, as I know that the site is sending cookies to my browser, why is Mech not getting those cookies and writing them to the cookies file? It knows where the file is and can write to it. But it doesn't write any cookies.


    Nobody says perl looks like line-noise any more
    kids today don't know what line-noise IS ...
[reply]

      I'm not an expert at this, but why would a browser, or WWW:Mechanize write a session cookie to a file? It's only supposed to be around as long as the browser is running, so keeping it in memory only makes sense.


      sas
[reply]
        That's logical, but I want it to DWIW!

        I guess the logical thing is that I would keep my script running in an endless loop, i.e. instead of a cron job running every five minutes, I run my script with while(1) and a five-minute sleep()?

        I don't love that idea.


        Nobody says perl looks like line-noise any more
        kids today don't know what line-noise IS ...
[reply]
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[select]
Re^2: Stay logged in between requests with WWW::Mechanize
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 14, 2008 at 02:47 UTC
    I find that setting the cookie_jar and "autosave" in the call to 'new()' causes W::M to spit out errors - so I tend to do it manually.
    Like what? I've never had problems with it.
[reply]

      Starting with an empty cookie file and replacing the empty call to 'new()' with 'new(cookie_jar=>...', etc., results in 

      Use of uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at /usr/share/perl5/
+HTTP/Cookies.pm line 425.
/tmp/cookies does not seem to contain cookies at /usr/share/perl5/HTTP
+/Cookies.pm line 426.

      [download]

      If I simply use 'new()', it doesn't happen.


      --
      "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."
      -- B. L. Whorf
[reply]
[d/l]

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