A lot of wireless venues require their users to open a browser and submit some information (email address, agree to terms of service, etc.). For example, I often work from Caribou Coffee, which requires me to give my email address before I can use their network. This is an annoying hassle and I decided to cheat instead.

I have written a Perl script which automates this process; based on a passed-in wireless SSID, it will run an automated web client through a specified sequence of actions to register with the network. The means of getting that SSID is OS-specific. For Mac OS, I use:

/usr/sbin/ioreg -l -n AirPortDriver | grep APCurrentSSID | sed 's/^.*= "\(.*\)".*$/\1/; s/ /_/g'

This should then be passed to the script as an argument:

perl register_with_network.pl <ssid>

Notes:

• You will need to acquire the Perl modules WWW::Mechanize, APR::URI, APR::Pool, HTTP::Response, and HTTP::Cookies. You'll also probably want Crypt::SSLeay if the registration sequence includes SSL-secured pages. For example, Caribou does.
• You will need to specify the sequence of actions for the network you're on. I've included an example for Caribou which requires only that you fill in your email address in the obvious place, but different venues will require different procedures.
• I run this script once a minute via cron. This minimizes the delay in registration.
• The final_action flag is for debugging purposes. If the script is not working as you'd expect, run it in the Perl debugger with a breakpoint for that flag and you can see where you're at in the registration process.
• In the specific case of the Caribou network, if you have not already registered your email address with them at a previous visit, you'll need to do that manually. This is probably true of other venues as well.

Comments welcome.

UPDATE: Improved URL parsing and revised set of steps for Caribou Coffee.

FURTHER UPDATE: Improved URL parsing at the end of registration, agent alias set to fool annoying gateways, and hack added for The Coffee Bean.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# This script accepts a wireless SSID as an argument, and will automat
+ically register
# the computer with that network if it has a specified list of actions
+ to do so.

# Copyright 2010, Chuck Hardin.  Released under GPL v3.0.  I accept no
+ liability
# for anyone's use of this script.  Use at your own risk.

# Invocation:
# perl register_with_network.pl <SSID>

use strict;
use lib qw(/sw/lib/perl5 /sw/lib/perl5/darwin);
use WWW::Mechanize;
use HTTP::Response;
use HTTP::Cookies;
use APR::URI;
use APR::Pool;

# Pick a page you ought to be able to fetch, unless you're behind a re
+gistration 
# firewall.

my $target_url='google.com';

my $ssid = $ARGV[0];
exit 1 unless $ssid;

# The %shops hash is of the following form:
#
# SSID -> listref of actions
# Each action is a listref of forms on the page
# Each form is a hash of relevant data for the form:
#  form_number specifies form number as per WWW::Mechanize->form_numbe
+r()
#  form_name specifies form name
#  fields is a hashref of data for the form
#  if no_submit_p is set, the form is not submitted upon completion
#
# A default is provided below for a known venue, Caribou Coffee.

my %shops = ( 'Caribou' => [[{ 'form_number'    => 1 } ],
                            [{ 'form_number'    => 1,
                               'fields'         => { 'Action' => 'Logi
+n' } } ],
                            [{ 'form_number'    => 1 } ],
                            [{ 'form_number'    => 1,
                               'fields'         => { 'Action' => 'Cont
+inue' } } ],
                            [{ 'form_number'    => 1 } ] ,
                            [{ 'form_number'    => 1,
                               'final_action'   => 1 } ] ] ,
             'ByerlysGuest' => [[{ 'fields'         => { 'email' => 'c
+hardin@gmail.com' } } ] ],
         'VIOC-Guest'    => [[{ 'button'         =>  'Yes, I agree'} ]
+],
         'CoffeeBeanWifi'    => [[{ 'form_number'         =>  '1',
                                        'fields' => {'code' => $ARGV[1
+]   }} ],
                                     [{ 'form_number'         =>  '1'}
+ ] ]
);

# Get the appropriate action list for the SSID

my $shop_action_list = $shops{$ssid};
exit 1 unless $shop_action_list;

# Set up the automated web client

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new(
    quiet    =>    1
    );
$mech->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new(file => "$ENV{HOME}/.cookies.txt"
+));

$mech->agent_alias( 'Mac Safari' );

# Check to see if we need to log in at all

my $response = $mech->get('http://www.'.$target_url.'/');

my $apr_pool = new APR::Pool;
my $parsed = parse APR::URI($apr_pool, ${$response->base()});

if ($parsed->hostname() =~ /$target_url/) {
    exit 1;
}

# If we do, iterate through each required action

foreach my $action (@$shop_action_list) {
#   Iterate through each form
    foreach my $form (@$action) {
#       Specify the form:
#       * If a form_name is given, select the form with that name
    if ($form->{'form_name'}) {
        $mech->form_name($form->{'form_name'});
    }
#       * Otherwise, if a form_number is given, select that form (one-
+based index as per WWW::Mechanize)
    elsif ($form->{'form_number'}) {
        $mech->form_number($form->{'form_number'});
    }
#       * Otherwise, if a list of fields is given, select the form wit
+h those fieldnames
    elsif ($form->{'fields'}) {
        $mech->form_with_fields(keys %{$form->{'fields'}});
    }
#       * Otherwise, default to the first form
    else {
        $mech->form_number(1);
    }

#       If fields are specified, fill them in
    if ($form->{'fields'}) {
        my %fields = %{$form->{'fields'}};
        foreach my $fieldname (keys %fields) {
        $mech->field($fieldname, $fields{$fieldname});
        }
    }

#       Unless otherwise directed, submit the form
    $response = $mech->submit($form->{'button'}) unless $form->{'no_su
+bmit_p'};
    }
}

# See if the registration succeeded

$response = $mech->get('http://www.'.$target_url.'/');

unless ($response->is_success()) {
    die "No luck, boss."
}

$response = $mech->get('http://www.'.$target_url.'/');

$parsed = parse APR::URI($apr_pool, ${$response->base()});

unless ($parsed->hostname() =~ /$target_url/) {
    die "Did not join network:  code=".$response->code();
}

1;
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