NAME

WWW::Mechanize::Examples - Sample programs that use WWW::Mechanize

SYNOPSIS

Plenty of people have learned WWW::Mechanize, and now, you can too!

Following are 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.

Note that the examples are in reverse order of my having received them, so the freshest examples are always at the top.

ccdl, by Andy Lester

Steve McConnell, author of the landmark Code Complete has put up the chapters for the 2nd edition in PDF format on his website. I needed to download them to take to Kinko's to have printed. This little script 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 was a script that 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 present 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 = new WWW::Mechanize;
        $mech->get( "http://www.imdb.com/search" );
        $mech->success or die "Can't get the search page";
    
        $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;
    }

cpansearch.pl, by Ed Silva

A quick little utility to search the CPAN and fire up a browser with a results page.

    #!/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(1);
    $browser->field("query", $module_name);
    $browser->click();

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

    my $url = $browser->uri;

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

    exit(0);

lj_friends.cgi, by Matt Cashner

    #!/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

    use WWW::Mechanize;

    # a tool to automatically post entries to a moveable type weblog, and set arbitary 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('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('entry_form');
        $mech->field('created_on_manual',$entry->{date});
        $mech->submit();
    }

get-despair, by Randal Schwartz

Randal submitted this bot that walks the despair.com site sucking down all the pictures.

    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:/; 
         
        $m->follow($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";
    }