http upload simulating browser

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

why doesn't this work? I am trying to upload a file to a webserver without actually doing it through a broweser but through a perl script. Here's the code;

use CGI;

use HTTP::Request::Common;
use LWP;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $res= $ua->request(POST 'http://server.com/cgi-bin/upload.cgi',
                [description  => 'a description', 
                 filetoupload => 'c:/test.dat' ]);

if ($res->is_success) {print "success\n";} 
  else {print "failed $!\n";}
[download]

I always get "failed invalid argument". Any help much appreciated. by the way sqware brackets are included but don't show in the code above.

2001-12-06 Edit by Corion : Added Code tags

Comment on http upload simulating browser Download Code

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Re: http upload simulating browser by miyagawa (Chaplain) on Dec 07, 2001 at 00:36 UTC
you should use CODE tag. File uploading via LWP is done like this (quote from perldoc: HTTP::Request::Common) `POST 'http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi', Content_Type => 'form-data', Content => [ name => 'Gisle Aas', email => 'gisle@aas.no', gender => 'M', born => '1964', init => ["$ENV{HOME}/.profile"], ]` [download] the point is set content-type to multipart/form-data use arrayref to indicate file upload -- Tatsuhiko Miyagawa miyagawa@cpan.org	[reply] [d/l]
Re: http upload simulating browser by IlyaM (Parson) on Dec 07, 2001 at 00:37 UTC
Read docs for HTTP::Request::Common. You should have something like (untested): `use HTTP::Request::Common; use LWP; my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new; my $res = $ua->request(POST 'http://server.com/cgi-bin/upload.cgi', Content_Type => 'form-data', Content => [ description => 'a description', filetoupload => ['c:/test.dat'] ]); .... ....` [download] Note that you probably do not need to `use CGI` if you want to write HTTP client. -- Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: http upload simulating browser by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Dec 07, 2001 at 01:03 UTC
$! does not contain a useful error message in this context. $! is meant for system error messages. Since the `$res` object neatly encapsulates the HTTP::Response from the web server, you should try printing this out instead of looking for an error message. (Technically, this isn't an application error, it's a "failure" response from a web server.)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: http upload simulating browser by jlongino (Parson) on Dec 07, 2001 at 01:40 UTC
You could also do it this way: `use strict; require LWP::UserAgent; my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new; my $req = HTTP::Request->new('GET', 'http://server.com/cgi-bin/upload. +cgi'); my $resp = $ua->request($req, 'c:/test.dat'); if ($resp->is_success) { print "Success.\n"; } else { print "Failed.\n"; }` [download] --Jim Update: Sorry about that. I misread the original post and was thinking download.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: http upload simulating browser by IlyaM (Parson) on Dec 07, 2001 at 01:54 UTC
You cannot upload files with GET request. And second optional parameter of `$us->request` is not a file to upload but is a file to save response. -- Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)	[reply] [d/l]