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

Can someone verify this is the proper way to fake a referer? For one reason or another, the site I'm loading isn't verifying it as a page load/view and I can only assume it's because the referer is wrong.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

use CGI qw/:standard/;
use LWP::UserAgent;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent("googlebot.com ");

# Create a request
my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'http://dragcave.ath.cx/viewdragon
+/Vjwf');
$req->header('Referer', 'http://www.google.com');
$reg->agent('testing');
print header, start_html();
print "done";

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Faking referer with LWP::UserAgent
by erroneousBollock (Curate) on Oct 06, 2007 at 03:39 UTC
    Typos aside ($reg), that does look like it sets the referring URL correctly.

    Perhaps the site requires that you obtain a cookie by visiting the referring URL's page ?

    Also, I don't see where you're actually getting the page. (ie: calling $ua->get)

    -David

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      I'm confused and have this now. Am I closer to getting it right? Not it says it cannot find header via package UserAgent 
      #!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

use CGI qw/:standard/;
use LWP::UserAgent;
use CGI::Carp qw/fatalsToBrowser/;

print header, start_html();

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent("google.com");
$ua->header('Referer', 'http://www.google.com');
$ua->agent('testing');
$ua->get('http://dragcave.ath.cx/viewdragon/Vjwf');

print $ua->content;

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
        Something like this should work:

        use LWP::UserAgent;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent("google.com");
my $response = $ua->get('http://dragcave.ath.cx/viewdragon/Vjwf', Refe
+rer => 'http://www.google.com');
print $response->content;

        [download]
        However, I really doubt thats the kind of security they'd be using. Usually, the referring URL would be a URL on their own site. If they discriminate at all, it'll be purely on user-agent string.

        -David

[reply]
[d/l]
        my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
$ua->agent("google.com");

my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $uri);
$req->header('Referer', 'http://www.google.com');

$ua->request($req);

        [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom