WWW::Mechanize::Firefox malformed JSON error?

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

Ran into some glitches after a FF upgrade, so I installed the latest versions of some of the modules, like MozRepl::Client. My W:M:F is a few months old still though.

I'm getting a weird new problem. Sometimes my program dies at the same place on the same page during a scrape/crawl. Sometimes it makes it past with no error. The page contents are semi-dynamic and there may be subtle changes between hits?

Here's the error:

(Sub)string is [[object Object] &#65533;&#65533;&#65533; {o] at /usr/l
+ocal/share/perl5/MozRepl/RemoteObject.pm line 251, <STDIN> line 34.
malformed JSON string, neither array, object, number, string or atom, 
+at character offset 1 (before "object Object] \x{2014}...") at /usr/l
+ocal/share/perl5/MozRepl/RemoteObject.pm line 239
    (in cleanup) command timed-out at /usr/local/share/perl5/MozRepl/C
+lient.pm line 186
[download]

I think perhaps it's hitting some embedded UTF8? Shouldn't it be able to happily handle that? Any ideas on where to start looking to apply a fix? Thanks!

Comment on WWW::Mechanize::Firefox malformed JSON error? Download Code

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Re: WWW::Mechanize::Firefox malformed JSON error? by Corion (Patriarch) on Aug 13, 2011 at 05:12 UTC
There are some issues where I haven't tracked down the cause. It seems to be that mozrepl sends more output than expected in some situations. There is discussion on the bugtracker, and a likely approach will be to write what mozrepl calls a "custom interactor".	[reply]
Re^2: WWW::Mechanize::Firefox malformed JSON error? by trystwithperl (Initiate) on Nov 25, 2011 at 06:05 UTC
Hi, Any updates on this? Will upgrading MozRepl or Mechanize::Firefox fix this issue? We're getting this for a lot more pages we're trying to process. Is there a way to work around this error that allows to go ahead and work with the partially loaded page? Regards	[reply]
Re^3: WWW::Mechanize::Firefox malformed JSON error? by Corion (Patriarch) on Nov 25, 2011 at 22:23 UTC
You could try with a recent version of MozRepl::RemoteObject and a recent version of <c>mozrepl , as they are both more UTF-8-safe nowadays. Please note that unless you supply a test case it is highly unlikely that I will work on an issue. If I can't reproduce something, I cannot tell whether any change fixes it.	[reply]