Perl Mechanize script dies during success check

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

I have a perl mechanize script that works great if the script is able to submit the form. However, if it is unable to to submit for any reason, I get an internal server error. The script gives me this error when I am checking the 'success' value. It never reaches the 'else' statement below:

my $m = WWW::Mechanize->new( autocheck=>1);

$m->get($url);

if ($m->success)       
{
    $m->submit_form(
        form_id => 'comment-form',
        fields  => {
           author => $author,
           email => $email,
           url => '',
           text => $comment,
        },
    );
        my $response = $m->response();
        print "Your comment has been posted and will appear shortly.";

} else {
        print "Was not able to connect to website.";
}
[download]

Any tips on what I can do so that it doesn't 'die' if there is an error. I had though that the code above would be enough but apparently it's not. Thank you in advance.

Comment on Perl Mechanize script dies during success check Download Code

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Re: Perl Mechanize script dies during success check by philipbailey (Curate) on Mar 26, 2010 at 19:14 UTC
I believe the `autocheck=>1` in your first line is your problem. This causes Mechanize to die on an I/O error. In older versions you could simply omit mention of autocheck, but it is now the default unless you are subclassing WWW:Mechanize, and you should explicitly use `autocheck => 0`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Perl Mechanize script dies during success check by crashtest (Curate) on Mar 26, 2010 at 19:57 UTC
From the documentation: `autocheck => [0\|1]` Checks each request made to see if it was successful. This saves you the trouble of manually checking yourself. Any errors found are errors, not warnings. philipbailey touched on a recent meditation about how defaulting `autocheck` to on broke many things for one particular monk. But in your case, you turned it on explicitly, so that monk's (mostly valid) complaints aren't applicable. You opted for autocheck yourself - and `WWW::Mechanize` is doing what you asked it to.	[reply] [d/l] [select]