Re^4: Automate WebLogin

[libvenus]

Thanks for you help! I read the documentation of both JE and SpiderMonkey. Gave JE a shot but i m unable to proceed. Here is the code that i wrote to test JE:

use strict;
use warnings;
use JE;
use Data::Dumper;
use File::Slurp;

my $je = new JE;

$je->html_mode(1);

$je->eval(scalar read_file 'output.js');

my $return_val = $je->eval('start()') or die $@;

The file output.js has the content of the javascript webpage that i want to parse.When i run the above script the JE failes with the follwing error:

ReferenceError: The variable start has not been declared at line 1.

Thanks!

[marto]

Your approach differs from any advice you've been given. JE is an alpha release, are you sure you want to continue to ignore the advice you've been give on tried and tested routes and use this?

[libvenus]

Well i read the documentation for WWW::Mechanize::Firefox and WWW::Scripter::Plugin::JavaScript.Out of the two I got more interested in WWW::Scripter::Plugin::JavaScript.I believe WWW::Scripter::Plugin::JavaScript uses JE as the backend engine.Please do correct me if you feel otherwise.I m sorry I never wanted to heed anyone's advice.I started with parsing the javascript response I got and embedded login credentials but got stuck with the "click".Read what Corion suggested but wasn't able to understand much.

[Corion]

I'm not sure what part of my advice you have problems with. I try to make the steps clear, so please tell me what step I didn't explain thoroughly enough:

Learn what your browser sends, then send that from Perl.

This is meant to tell you to investigate what data your browser sends to the remote webserver when you click a button. The intention behind is that the remote webserver cannot know whether there is a browser or a Perl script at the other side, so as long as your Perl script sends the same data as a browser, it will never find out.

For example, using the Live HTTP Headers extension.

This sentence is to show you a tool that can do the above.

Or learn Javascript and how it interacts with the HTML DOM, and what the click for a submit button does.

This sentence is intended to show you the other, more static, approach to scraping. Read (and understand) the Javascript and what it does, and directly replicate that from Perl.

Or just modify the code to find it out.

This sentence is to show you a variation on the more static approach. By modifying the Javascript code, you can also maybe find out what it does and what purpose it has.

[marto]

WWW::Scripter::Plugin::JavaScript does indeed use JE, according to the WWW::Scripter::Plugin::JavaScript it's also an alpha release. Corions advice is to examine how your browser is sending, then just send the same response using Perl. Corion suggests using a tool to simplify this process. The other suggestions are still valid also.