Re^3: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly

Extra tidbits:

If something isn't working as expected, one should start by checking what error occured! open, print and close all indicate if they were successful, and if not, why they weren't.
Declaring variables before they are used just introduces the possibility of errors. Instead of
```
my $x;
...
$x = ...;
[download]
```
do
```
...
my $x = ...;
[download]
```

Speaking of declaring variables, don't use global variables for file handles. That hasn't been necessary for 10 years.

open(my $fh, '>', '/tmp/data.txt')
    or die("Can't create file /tmp/data.txt: $!\n");
print $fh $res->content;
close($fh);
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my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET =>'http://SOMEURLHERE');
my $res = $ua->request($req);
[download]

can be written as

my $res = $ua->get('http://SOMEURLHERE');
[download]

Comment on Re^3: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly Select or Download Code

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Re^4: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly by Anonymous Monk on Nov 03, 2009 at 13:42 UTC
Hello All, Thank you so far. I took all your suggestions (e.g. decoded_content(), file handles, variable declarations, etc). It turns out though, that my hunch was right. I should have done an "ls -l" on the file and I would have discovered it was not an empty file. If you hadn't figured out already I am on a Unix/Linux system. Contrary to my original posting I thought I had done a "cat" when in actuality I had done a "more". Funny enough, regardless of whether I decode the content or not, something shows up with the "cat" command but not the "more" command. Also, I am able to edit the file in "vi" and see something. I am still stumped by the output though. Assuming that I know the contents of my file should be two lines of text separated by a newline. For example, "The Cat" and "The Dog" on separate lines: If I "cat" the file, I get: The Cat The Dog If I "vi" the file, I get: @^T@^h@^e@^ @^C@^a@^t@^ @^T@^h@^e@^ @^D@^o@^g@^ @^ Just for giggles, I did an "od -c", and I got: 0000000 \0 T \0 h \0 e \0 C \0 a \0 t \0 \n \0 T 0000020 \0 h \0 e \0 D \0 o \0 g \0 \n So for the $64 million questions, why is this showing up empty when I "more" the file, why is the calling program seeing it as empty as does the "more" command, and what's with these characters?	[reply]
Re^5: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 03, 2009 at 15:14 UTC
The file is encoded using UTF-16be	[reply]
Re^4: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly by Anonymous Monk on Nov 03, 2009 at 15:17 UTC
If I decode this with UTF8, should that not take care of it?	[reply]
Re^5: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 03, 2009 at 15:34 UTC
It's not UTF-8, it's UTF-16be (or subset UCS-2be). Treating UTF-16be as UTF-8 is a bug. Output decoded text is a bug. If you decoded text, you need to encode it when you output it. You're free to use a different encoding, though.	[reply]
Re^6: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly by Anonymous Monk on Nov 03, 2009 at 16:21 UTC
Ok, so then I need to encode my output to ascii text somehow. You'll have to excuse my ignorance here as this is totally uncharted territory for me. So would something like the following work? `use Encode qw(encode); . . . my $decodedContent = encode("ascii", $res->content);` [download] Where $decodedContent is the text that I am looking for? Is there a difference if I use HTTP::Message-> encode($encoding) instead? I'm not entirely sure of the man pages on this.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^7: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 03, 2009 at 17:57 UTC
Re^8: Cannot access HTTP::Response content properly by URAvgDeveloper101 (Novice) on Nov 03, 2009 at 19:48 UTC
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