Ankit.11nov has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi there,
I just discovered the monks! I havent been a Perl programmer for a long time... its kind of new to me.

What I am trying to do? "Fetch webpage,convert to text and store it in a file" 
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::TreeBuilder;
use HTML::FormatText;

print "Opening the URL";
$URL=get("http://www.yahoo.com/");

$Format=HTML::FormatText->new;
$TreeBuilder=HTML::TreeBuilder->new;

$TreeBuilder->parse($URL);
$Parsed=$Format->format($TreeBuilder);

open FILE_OUT , '>D:\Profiles\in2228c\Desktop\info.txt';
print FILE_OUT "$Parsed";

close FILE_OUT;
exit;

[download]

On running the above code it is not giving any error , but it is not fetching any data from the webpage also.
Can you please help me out on this ? What could be the problem here?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Fetching Web Page and covert to text
by Utilitarian (Vicar) on Jul 16, 2009 at 11:37 UTC
    What happens when you check the return of LWP::Simple::get() ? 
    use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::TreeBuilder;
use HTML::FormatText;

print "Opening the URL";
$URL=get("http://www.yahoo.com/") || die "Couldn't fecth page";

$Format=HTML::FormatText->new;
$TreeBuilder=HTML::TreeBuilder->new;

$TreeBuilder->parse($URL);
$Parsed=$Format->format($TreeBuilder);

open FILE_OUT , '>D:\Profiles\in2228c\Desktop\info.txt';
print FILE_OUT "$Parsed";

close FILE_OUT;
exit;

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      Its giving the below error?
      Couldn't fecth page at open_url.pl line 6. Opening the URL
[reply]
        It seems your problem is one of connectivity rather than your Perl, though for your own sanity use the following in your script also 
        use strict;
use warnings;

        [download]
        Tested your script locally here and I get nicely formatted page out to the file.
[reply]
[d/l]

        Perhaps the get-method is not the one you want to use?

        I don't know the three modules you are using, but more than one of them could have a get method.

[reply]
Re: Fetching Web Page and covert to text
by apl (Monsignor) on Jul 16, 2009 at 14:04 UTC
    Test all error returns (get, parse, open, etc.), die when they fail, and display the error-code returned.
[reply]
[d/l]
      I have modified my code based on the inputs given. 
      use strict;
use warnings;

use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::TreeBuilder;
use HTML::FormatText;

print "Opening the URL";
my $URL=get("http://www.yahoo.com/") || die "Couldn't fetch page";

my $Format=HTML::FormatText->new;
my $TreeBuilder=HTML::TreeBuilder->new;

$TreeBuilder->parse($URL);
my $Parsed=$Format->format($TreeBuilder);

open FILE_OUT , '>D:\Profiles\in2228c\Desktop\info.txt' || die "No suc
+h file";
print FILE_OUT "$Parsed";

close FILE_OUT;
exit;

      [download]

      But still I am getting the same error:
      Couldn't fetch page at 780696.pl line 9.
      Is there any other way of solving this problem?
[reply]
[d/l]
        The write-up on LWP::Simple::get says:
        You will not be able to examine the response code or response headers (like 'Content-Type') when you are accessing the web using this function. If you need that information you should use the full OO interface (see LWP::UserAgent).
        So if I was you, I'd follow that suggestion.
[reply]

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