WWW::Mechanize and text input outside form

[fauria]

Hi all!

Im writing a spider using WWW::Mechanize, and ive found a web with a login box out of a <form> tag. <input type's> are not inside any form, and WWW::Mechanize says:

<input> outside <form> at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3/WWW/Mechanize.pm line 1335

Is there any way of filling this boxes (are username and password), and hit the submit button?

Thank you!

Retitled by davido.

[Corion]

No. Or rather, in principle yes, but it won't work as you want it to work, as input fields outside of form tags will never be submitted by the browser, except via Javascript. And WWW::Mechanize does not understand Javascript.

[Kanji]

Although you could rewrite the HTML so that the input field was inside the form tags...

# untested; salt to taste

my $html =  $mech->content;
   $html =~ s/(<input[^>]+>)(.*?<form[^>]*>)/$2$1/;

$mech->update_html($html);

[PodMaster]

Yes, but not by using ->value() because that (<input> outside of <form>) is not valid html. You would need to use ->request().