WWW::Me...xamples(3)

📦
version 2.190.0 · 14 versions
, in opensuse-leap 16.0

✨ NAME ✨

WWW::Mechanize::Examples(3) — sample programs that use WWW::Mechanize. also, yep, this is user-contributed Perl documentation, bestie. 💖

🌸 VERSION 🌸

version 2.19, periodt. 💅

🫶 SYNOPSIS 🫶

okay so literally plenty of people have learned WWW::Mechanize, and now you can too! ✨

what follows is a bunch of user-supplied samples of WWW::Mechanize in action. if you have samples you'd like to contribute, please send 'em to "<andy@petdance.com>". 🫶

you can also look at the t/*.t files in the distribution. 👑

please note that these examples are not intended to do any specific task. for all I know, they're no longer functional because the sites they hit have changed. they're here to give examples of how people have used WWW::Mechanize. no cap.

also note that the examples are in reverse order of my having received them, so the freshest examples are always at the top. iykyk. 🌈

💖 Starbucks Density Calculator, by Nat Torkington 💖

Nat Torkington — editor for O'Reilly Media and co-author of the Perl Cookbook — sent in a whole pair of programs. here's the lore:

Rael [Dornfest] discovered that you can easily find out how many Starbucks there are in an area by searching for "Starbucks". So I wrote a silly scraper for some old census data and came up with some Starbucks density figures. There's no meaning to these numbers thanks to errors from using old census data coupled with false positives in Yahoo search (e.g., "Dodie Starbuck-Your Style Desgn" in Portland OR). But it was fun to waste a night on.

and here are the top twenty cities in descending order of population, with the amount of territory each Starbucks has. e.g., a New York NY Starbucks covers 1.7 square miles of ground. 🗽☕

New York, NY        1.7
Los Angeles, CA     1.2
Chicago, IL         1.0
Houston, TX         4.6
Philadelphia, PA    6.8
San Diego, CA       2.7
Detroit, MI        19.9
Dallas, TX          2.7
Phoenix, AZ         4.1
San Antonio, TX    12.3
San Jose, CA        1.1
Baltimore, MD       3.9
Indianapolis, IN   12.1
San Francisco, CA   0.5
Jacksonville, FL   39.9
Columbus, OH        7.3
Milwaukee, WI       5.1
Memphis, TN        15.1
Washington, DC      1.4
Boston, MA          0.5

✨ get_pop_data ✨

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use WWW::Mechanize;
use Storable;

$url = 'http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027.html';
$m = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$m->get($url);

$c = $m->content;

$c =~ m{<A NAME=.tabA.>(.*?)</TABLE>}s
  or die "Can't find the population table\n";
$t = $1;
@outer = $t =~ m{<TR.*?>(.*?)</TR>}gs;
shift @outer;
foreach $r (@outer) {
  @bits = $r =~ m{<TD.*?>(.*?)</TD>}gs;
  for ($x = 0; $x < @bits; $x++) {
    $b = $bits[$x];
    @v = split /\s*<BR>\s*/, $b;
    foreach (@v) { s/^\s+//; s/\s+$// }
    push @{$data[$x]}, @v;
  }
}

for ($y = 0; $y < @{$data[0]}; $y++) {
    $data{$data[1][$y]} = {
        NAME => $data[1][$y],
        RANK => $data[0][$y],
        POP  => comma_free($data[2][$y]),
        AREA => comma_free($data[3][$y]),
        DENS => comma_free($data[4][$y]),
    };
}

store(\%data, "cities.dat");

sub comma_free {
  my $n = shift;
  $n =~ s/,//;
  return $n;
}

✨ plague_of_coffee ✨

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use WWW::Mechanize;
use strict;
use Storable;

$SIG{__WARN__} = sub {} ;  # ssssssh

my $Cities = retrieve("cities.dat");

my $m = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$m->get("http://local.yahoo.com/");

my @cities = sort { $Cities->{$a}{RANK} <=> $Cities->{$b}{RANK} } keys %$Cities;
foreach my $c ( @cities ) {
  my $fields = {
    'stx' => "starbucks",
    'csz' => $c,
  };

  my $r = $m->submit_form(form_number => 2,
                          fields => $fields);
  die "Couldn't submit form" unless $r->is_success;

  my $hits = number_of_hits($r);
  #  my $ppl  = sprintf("%d", 1000 * $Cities->{$c}{POP} / $hits);
  #  print "$c has $hits Starbucks.  That's one for every $ppl people.\n";
  my $density = sprintf("%.1f", $Cities->{$c}{AREA} / $hits);
  print "$c : $density\n";
}

sub number_of_hits {
  my $r = shift;
  my $c = $r->content;
  if ($c =~ m{\d+ out of <b>(\d+)</b> total results for}) {
    return $1;
  }
  if ($c =~ m{Sorry, no .*? found in or near}) {
    return 0;
  }
  if ($c =~ m{Your search matched multiple cities}) {
    warn "Your search matched multiple cities\n";
    return 0;
  }
  if ($c =~ m{Sorry we couldn.t find that location}) {
    warn "No cities\n";
    return 0;
  }
  if ($c =~ m{Could not find.*?, showing results for}) {
    warn "No matches\n";
    return 0;
  }
  die "Unknown response\n$c\n";
}

🦋 pb-upload, by John Beppu 🦋

this one takes filenames of images from the command line and uploads them to a www.photobucket.com folder. John Beppu, the author, says:

I had 92 pictures I wanted to upload, and doing it through a browser would've been torture. But thanks to mech, all I had to do was ./pb.upload *.jpg and watch it do its thing. It felt good. If I had more time, I'd implement WWW::Photobucket on top of WWW::Mechanize.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w -T

use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;

my $login    = "login_name";
my $password = "password";
my $folder   = "folder";

my $url = "http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v281/$login/$folder/";

# login to your photobucket.com account
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$mech->get($url);
$mech->submit_form(
    form_number => 1,
    fields      => { password => $password },
);
die unless ($mech->success);

# upload image files specified on command line
foreach (@ARGV) {
    print "$_\n";
    $mech->form_number(2);
    $mech->field('the_file[]' => $_);
    $mech->submit();
}

🎀 listmod, by Ian Langworth 🎀

Ian Langworth dropped this little gem, and it's giving joy to beleaguered mailing list admins. it discards spam messages through mailman's web interface. 🫶

#!/arch/unix/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
#
# listmod - fast alternative to mailman list interface
#
# usage: listmod crew XXXXXXXX
#

die "usage: $0 <listname> <password>\n" unless @ARGV == 2;
my ($listname, $password) = @ARGV;

use CGI qw(unescape);

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

use Term::ReadLine;
my $term = Term::ReadLine->new($0);

# submit the form, get the cookie, go to the list admin page
$m->get("https://lists.ccs.neu.edu/bin/admindb/$listname");
$m->set_visible( $password );
$m->click;

# exit if nothing to do
print "There are no pending requests.\n" and exit
    if $m->content =~ /There are no pending requests/;

# select the first form and examine its contents
$m->form_number(1);
my $f = $m->current_form or die "Couldn't get first form!\n";

# get me the base form element for each email item
my @items = map {m/^.+?-(.+)/} grep {m/senderbanp/} $f->param
    or die "Couldn't get items in first form!\n";

# iterate through items, prompt user, commit actions
foreach my $item (@items) {

    # show item info
    my $sender = unescape($item);
    my ($subject) = [$f->find_input("senderbanp-$item")->value_names]->[1]
        =~ /Subject:\s+(.+?)\s+Size:/g;

    # prompt user
    my $choice = '';
    while ( $choice !~ /^[DAX]$/ ) {
        print "$sender\: '$subject'\n";
        $choice = uc $term->readline("Action: defer/accept/discard [dax]: ");
        print "\n\n";
    }

    # set button
    $m->field("senderaction-$item" => {D=>0,A=>1,X=>3}->{$choice});
}

# submit actions
$m->click;

🌈 ccdl, by Andy Lester 🌈

Steve McConnell, author of the landmark Code Complete, put the chapters for the 2nd edition up in PDF format on his website. I needed to download them to take to Kinko's to have printed, and this little program did it for me. 🖨️✨

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;

my $start = "http://www.stevemcconnell.com/cc2/cc.htm";

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new( autocheck => 1 );
$mech->get( $start );

my @links = $mech->find_all_links( url_regex => qr/\d+.+\.pdf$/ );

for my $link ( @links ) {
    my $url = $link->url_abs;
    my $filename = $url;
    $filename =~ s[^.+/][];

    print "Fetching $url";
    $mech->get( $url, ':content_file' => $filename );

    print "   ", -s $filename, " bytes\n";
}

🍓 quotes.pl, by Andy Lester 🍓

this program was going to get a hack in Spidering Hacks but got cut at the last minute, probably because it's against IMDB's TOS to scrape from it. I'm presenting it here as an example, not a suggestion that you break their TOS. last I checked it didn't work because their HTML didn't match, but it's still good as sample code. 💀

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

use WWW::Mechanize;
use Getopt::Long;
use Text::Wrap;

my $match = undef;
my $random = undef;
GetOptions(
    "match=s" => \$match,
    "random" => \$random,
) or exit 1;

my $movie = shift @ARGV or die "Must specify a movie\n";

my $quotes_page = get_quotes_page( $movie );
my @quotes = extract_quotes( $quotes_page );

if ( $match ) {
    $match = quotemeta($match);
    @quotes = grep /$match/i, @quotes;
}

if ( $random ) {
    print $quotes[rand @quotes];
}
else {
    print join( "\n", @quotes );
}

sub get_quotes_page {
    my $movie = shift;

    my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new;
    $mech->get( "http://www.imdb.com/search" );
    $mech->success or die "Can't get the search page";

okay bestie, we're still mid-function in the quote-hunting example — no cap, the indentation is giving “deep in the code” energy, but you've got this 💖

               $mech->submit_form(
                   form_number => 2,
                   fields => {
                       title   => $movie,
                       restrict    => "Movies only",
                   },
               );

               my @links = $mech->find_all_links( url_regex => qr[^/Title] )
                   or die "No matches for \"$movie\" were found.\n";

               # Use the first link
               my ( $url, $title ) = @{$links[0]};

               warn "Checking $title...\n";

               $mech->get( $url );
               my $link = $mech->find_link( text_regex => qr/Memorable Quotes/i )
                   or die qq{"$title" has no quotes in IMDB!\n};

               warn "Fetching quotes...\n\n";
               $mech->get( $link->[0] );

               return $mech->content;
           }

           sub extract_quotes {
               my $page = shift;

               # Nibble away at the unwanted HTML at the beginnning...
               $page =~ s/.+Memorable Quotes//si;
               $page =~ s/.+?(<a name)/$1/si;

               # ... and the end of the page
               $page =~ s/Browse titles in the movie quotes.+$//si;
               $page =~ s/<p.+$//g;

               # Quotes separated by an <HR> tag
               my @quotes = split( /<hr.+?>/, $page );

               for my $quote ( @quotes ) {
                   my @lines = split( /<br>/, $quote );
                   for ( @lines ) {
                       s/<[^>]+>//g;   # Strip HTML tags
                       s/\s+/ /g;          # Squash whitespace
                       s/^ //;     # Strip leading space
                       s/ $//;     # Strip trailing space
                       s/&#34;/"/g;    # Replace HTML entity quotes

                       # Word-wrap to fit in 72 columns
                       $Text::Wrap::columns = 72;
                       $_ = wrap( '', '    ', $_ );
                   }
                   $quote = join( "\n", @lines );
               }

               return @quotes;
           }

That extract_quotes sub is literally doing the most with HTML cleanup — nibbling away at the beginning and end, splitting on <HR>, stripping tags, squashing whitespace, replacing &#34; quotes, and word-wrapping to 72 columns. Obsessed with the tiny cleanup era ✨

cpansearch.pl, by Ed Silva

Ed Silva's cpansearch.pl is a quick little utility that searches the CPAN and fires up a browser with a results page. Very “search, click, slay” energy 🎀

#!/usr/bin/perl

# turn on perl's safety features
use strict;
use warnings;

# work out the name of the module we're looking for
my $module_name = $ARGV[0]
  or die "Must specify module name on command line";

# create a new browser
use WWW::Mechanize;
my $browser = WWW::Mechanize->new();

# tell it to get the main page
$browser->get("http://search.cpan.org/");

# okay, fill in the box with the name of the
# module we want to look up
$browser->form_number(1);
$browser->field("query", $module_name);
$browser->click();

# click on the link that matches the module name
$browser->follow_link( text_regex => $module_name );

my $url = $browser->uri;

# launch a browser...
system('galeon', $url);

exit(0);

lj_friends.cgi, by Matt Cashner

Matt Cashner's lj_friends.cgi gives a paid user's LiveJournal friends list as an RSS feed — full entries, protected entries, etc. The comments even tell you to add it to your favorite RSS reader as http://your.site.com/cgi-bin/lj_friends.cgi?user=USER&password=PASSWORD 🦋

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Provides an rss feed of a paid user's LiveJournal friends list
# Full entries, protected entries, etc.
# Add to your favorite rss reader as
# http://your.site.com/cgi-bin/lj_friends.cgi?user=USER&password=PASSWORD

use warnings;
use strict;

use WWW::Mechanize;
use CGI;

my $cgi = CGI->new();
my $form = $cgi->Vars;

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

$agent->get('http://www.livejournal.com/login.bml');
$agent->form_number('3');
$agent->field('user',$form->{user});
$agent->field('password',$form->{password});
$agent->submit();
$agent->get('http://www.livejournal.com/customview.cgi?user='.$form->{user}.'&styleid=225596&checkcookies=1');
print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
print $agent->content();

Hacking Movable Type, by Dan Rinzel

Dan Rinzel's Movable Type hack automatically posts entries to a Movable Type weblog and sets arbitrary creation dates. It gets tricksy with the 302 redirect and the <body onload=""> handler, and the MT date format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS is the only one that won't error out 🔥

use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;

# a tool to automatically post entries to a moveable type weblog, and set arbitrary creation dates

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
my $entry;
$entry->{title} = "Test AutoEntry Title";
$entry->{btext} = "Test AutoEntry Body";
$entry->{date} = '2002-04-15 14:18:00';
my $start = qq|http://my.blog.site/mt.cgi|;

$mech->get($start);
$mech->field('username','und3f1n3d');
$mech->field('password','obscur3d');
$mech->submit(); # to get login cookie
$mech->get(qq|$start?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=1|);
$mech->form_name('entry_form');
$mech->field('title',$entry->{title});
$mech->field('category_id',1); # adjust as needed
$mech->field('text',$entry->{btext});
$mech->field('status',2); # publish, or 1 = draft
$results = $mech->submit();

# if we're ok with this entry being datestamped "NOW" (no {date} in %entry)
# we're done. Otherwise, time to be tricksy
# MT returns a 302 redirect from this form. the redirect itself contains a <body onload=""> handler
# which takes the user to an editable version of the form where the create date can be edited
# MT date format of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS is the only one that won't error out

if ($entry->{date} && $entry->{date} =~ /^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}\s+\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}/) {
    # travel the redirect
    $results = $mech->get($results->{_headers}->{location});
    $results->{_content} =~ /<body onLoad="([^\"]+)"/is;
    my $js = $1;
    $js =~ /\'([^']+)\'/;
    $results = $mech->get($start.$1);
    $mech->form_name('entry_form');
    $mech->field('created_on_manual',$entry->{date});
    $mech->submit();
}

get-despair, by Randal Schwartz

Randal Schwartz submitted this bot that walks the despair.com site and sucks down all the pictures. Iconic behavior, honestly 🌈

use strict;
$|++;

use WWW::Mechanize;
use File::Basename;

my $m = WWW::Mechanize->new;

$m->get("http://www.despair.com/indem.html");

my @top_links = @{$m->links};

for my $top_link_num (0..$#top_links) {
    next unless $top_links[$top_link_num][0] =~ /^http:/;

    $m->follow_link( n=>$top_link_num ) or die "can't follow $top_link_num";

    print $m->uri, "\n";
    for my $image (grep m{^http://store4}, map $_->[0], @{$m->links}) {
        my $local = basename $image;
        print " $image...", $m->mirror($image, $local)->message, "\n"
    }

    $m->back or die "can't go back";
}

👑 AUTHOR 👑

This masterpiece is by Andy Lester <andy at petdance.com> — absolute main character energy 💜

This software is copyright (c) 2004 by Andy Lester.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

That's the whole vibe for this page, bestie: source/version perl v5.42.0, date 2024-09-17, page WWW::Me...xamples(3). Bye, go write something iconic 💅🦋

📦 where this page comes from