Perl LWP and POST

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

I have a question about using Perl's LWP::UserAgent. I've played around with it enough to understand how to return the source code from a page but now I want to learn how to actually submit form fields using Perl. However after trying quite a few examples I still cannot get it to work. Just for trying purposes I decided to use this site www.wheresmycellphone.com Here is my current Code

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);

my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $resp = (POST 'www . wheresmycellphone . com/', ['txtisdcode' => 1,
+  txtcitycode' => '000', 'txtphone' => '0000000']);

my $response_to_discard = $browser->request($resp);
print $response_to_discard;
[download]

It runs without errors but I expect to receive a call on my cell phone which I never do. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

- John

Comment on Perl LWP and POST Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl LWP and POST by almut (Canon) on May 31, 2009 at 02:55 UTC
Maybe try something like this instead: `#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use LWP::UserAgent; my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new; my @req = ('http://www.wheresmycellphone.com/submit.php', [txtisdcode => 1, txtcitycode => '000', txtphone => '00000 +00']); my $response_to_discard = $browser->post(@req); print $response_to_discard->as_string();` [download] In particular, that line `my $resp = (POST 'www . wheresmycellphone . com/', ['txtisdcode' => 1, + txtcitycode' => '000', 'txtphone' => '0000000']);` [download] is wrong in several respects: `POST` is a bareword ...that is not separated from the next item with a comma `txtcitycode'` should either be quoted properly, or not at all (`'=>'` already does that) `$resp` should be `@resp`, otherwise you'd only have the final arrayref of that list in `$resp` the URL must be absolute (`http://...`) the respective form on `www.whereismycellphone.com` is posting to `submit.php`, not `/` (I wonder how you got that past `-w` and `use strict;`...)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Perl LWP and POST by ProgramIT (Novice) on May 31, 2009 at 14:59 UTC
Thanks! This works alot better. After looking at the HTML for the page it is what I expect. However, I still don't receive the phone call. It is as though the data I am trying to submit isn't actually being submitted. Any idea why this is?	[reply]
Re^3: Perl LWP and POST by almut (Canon) on May 31, 2009 at 15:31 UTC
Have you tried adding `submitcall => "Make it Ring!"`, as atcroft suggested? If that doesn't work either, I'd submit the form from a browser, while logging the headers that are being exchanged — using Firefox's LiveHTTP Headers add-on, or some such, in order to see if there's something else (session cookie?) that you need to mimic...	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Perl LWP and POST by ProgramIT (Novice) on May 31, 2009 at 18:14 UTC
Re: Perl LWP and POST by atcroft (Abbot) on May 31, 2009 at 02:49 UTC
Quick observation: the form on that site contains a "submitcall" field which appears to be set to "Make it Ring!", which your example code does not include. Does it still fail if you include that field? HTH.	[reply]