LibWWW - quirky question....

Author

quirky question....

bruce

2006-03-07, 9:58 pm

hi...

i have a simple/quirky question. i have a url -->
http://www.acs.rutgers.edu:8880/pls...y.select_major. i can get
to this page by doing a submit from
==>http://clue.rutgers.edu:8880/sc_pn/...c_display.main.

however, when i try to simply use libwww or one of the other perl packages
to access the "select_major" page, i fail to get it. just as a test, i
copied the url from one browser window to another, and the 2nd broswer
couldn't access the page...

can someone shed some light into what might be happening/going on..??

i suspect that there's some kind of redirection/session function in the
background... i also tried enabling/disabling cookies with no difference in
behavior...

thanks...

-bruce

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Thomas, Mark - BLS CTR

2006-03-07, 9:58 pm

Hello again Bruce.

> however, when i try to simply use libwww or one of the
> other perl packages to access the "select_major" page,
> i fail to get it. just as a test, i copied the url from
> one browser window to another, and the 2nd broswer
> couldn't access the page...
>
> can someone shed some light into what might be happening/going on..??

The page is the output of a back-end application. If you look at the source
of the initial page, it is the action of a form that expects a POST with
certain fields filled in. You can duplicate the post programmatically or try
a GET with the same fields present in the URL (as another responder had
success with).

Here's something you might find useful: HTTP::Recorder. This acts as a
proxy--you point your browser to it, fill out and submit some forms (even
multi-step forms) and HTTP::Recorder will write a WWW::Mechanize script that
plays back those actions! There's a recent article about it on perl.com:
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/06/04/recorder.html. It doesn't get any
easier than that!

--
Mark Thomas Thomas.Mark@bls.gov
Internet Systems Architect DigitalNet, Inc.

$_=q;KvtuyboopuifeyQQfeemyibdlfee;; y.e.s. ;y+B-x+A-w+s; ;y;y; ;;print;;

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Arms, Mike

2006-03-08, 7:59 am

bruce [mailto:bedouglas@earthlink.net]
>
> i have a simple/quirky question. i have a url -->
> http://www.acs.rutgers.edu:8880/pls...play.select_maj
> or. i can get
> to this page by doing a submit from
> ==>http://clue.rutgers.edu:8880/sc_pn/...c_display.main.
>
> however, when i try to simply use libwww or one of the other
> perl packages to access the "select_major" page, i fail to
> get it. just as a test, i copied the url from one browser
> window to another, and the 2nd broswer couldn't access the page...
>
> can someone shed some light into what might be happening/going on..??
>
> i suspect that there's some kind of redirection/session
> function in the background... i also tried enabling/disabling
> cookies with no difference in behavior...
>
> thanks...
>
> -bruce

Ah, but it does work if you provide values for the
fields:

http://www.acs.rutgers.edu:8880/pls...jor?p_campus=NB
&p_level=U&p_yearterm=20047

So, I would guess that the script is checking for
the existence (and maybe even validate values)
of the fields before attempting to pass them on
to another page. I am not too confident of this guess
though without knowing the code and just basing this
off of observed behavior. The good news is that the
"extended" URL that I have above illustrates that a
"GET" method will work. Hopefully this will help in
your sleuthing.

--
Mike Arms

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