NAME

WWW::Automate - automate interaction with websites

NOTICE

THIS MODULE IS NO LONGER MAINTAINED.

Please use WWW::Mechanize instead.

SYNOPSIS

  use WWW::Automate;
  my $agent = WWW::Automate->new();

  $agent->get($url);

  $agent->follow($link);

  $agent->form($number);
  $agent->field($name, $value);
  $agent->click($button);

  $agent->back();

  $agent->add_header($name => $value);

  print "OK" if $agent->{content} =~ /$expected/;

DESCRIPTION

This module is intended to help you automate interaction with a website. It bears a not-very-remarkable outwards resemblance to WWW::Chat, on which it is based. The main difference between this module and WWW::Chat is that WWW::Chat requires a pre-processing stage before you can run your script, whereas WWW::Automate does not.

WWW::Automate is a subclass of LWP::UserAgent, so anything you can do with an LWP::UserAgent, you can also do with this. See LWP::UserAgent for more information on the possibilities.

new()

Creates and returns a new WWW::Automate object, hereafter referred to as the 'agent'.

    my $agent = WWW::Automate->new()

$agent->get($url)

Given a URL/URI, fetches it.

The results are stored internally in the agent object, as follows:

     uri       The current URI
     req       The current request object        [HTTP::Request]
     res       The response received             [HTTP::Response]
     status    The status code of the response
     ct        The content type of the response
     base      The base URI for current response
     content   The content of the response
     forms     Array of forms found in content   [HTML::Form]
     form      Current form                      [HTML::Form]
     links     Array of links found in content 

You can get at them with, for example: $agent->{content}

$agent->follow($string|$num)

Follow a link. If you provide a string, the first link whose text matches that string will be followed. If you provide a number, it will be the nth link on the page.

$agent->form($number)

Selects the Nth form on the page as the target for subsequent calls to field() and click(). Emits a warning and returns false if there is no such form. Forms are indexed from 1, that is to say, the first form is number 1 (not zero).

$agent->field($name, $value, $number)

Given the name of a field, set its value to the value specified. This applies to the current form (as set by the form() method or defaulting to the first form on the page).

The optional $number parameter is used to distinguish between two fields with the same name. The fields are numbered from 1.

$agent->click($button, $x, $y);

Has the effect of clicking a button on a form. This method takes an optional method which is the name of the button to be pressed. If there is only one button on the form, it simply clicks that one button.

$agent->submit()

Shortcut for $a->click("submit")

$agent->back();

The equivalent of hitting the "back" button in a browser. Returns to the previous page. Won't go back past the first page.

$agent->add_header(name => $value)

Sets a header for the WWW::Automate agent to use every time it gets a webpage. This is *NOT* stored in the agent object (because if it were, it would disappear if you went back() past where you'd set it) but in the hash variable %WWW::Automate::headers, which is a hashref of all headers to be set. You can manipulate this directly if you want to; the add_header() method is just provided as a convenience function for the most common case of adding a header.

INTERNAL METHODS

These methods are only used internally. You probably don't need to know about them.

push_page_stack()

pop_page_stack()

The agent keeps a stack of visited pages, which it can pop when it needs to go BACK and so on.

The current page needs to be pushed onto the stack before we get a new page, and the stack needs to be popped when BACK occurs.

Neither of these take any arguments, they just operate on the $agent object.

extract_links()

Extracts HREF links from the content of a webpage.

do_request()

Actually performs a request on the $self->{req} request object, and sets a bunch of attributes on $self.

BUGS

Please report any bugs via the system at http://rt.cpan.org/

AUTHOR

Kirrily "Skud" Robert <skud@cpan.org>

cpanm WWW::Automate

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install WWW::Automate