Re: How to POST to a web server?

I believe what you are trying to do is make a POST to a web page, and then view or store the returned page... This is a straightforward problem and here is the Perl code that will do this:

http_post.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict 'subs';
use LWP::UserAgent;

BEGIN { $ENV{PATH} = '/usr/bin:/bin' }
require LWP::UserAgent;

$URL = "http://localhost/Test.asp";

print "Posting to the page '$URL'.\n";

($returnedPage) = DoPost ($URL);

print "Dispaying POSTed results:\n";
print "="x72."\n$returnedPage\n"."="x72."\n";

exit;

sub DoPost {
  local ($url) = @_;

  use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
  use LWP::UserAgent;
  
  my $browserType = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.
+0)";
  my $httpReferer = "http://www.PerlMonks.org";
  
  my $userAgent = new LWP::UserAgent;
  $userAgent->agent("$browserType "); 
  
  my $request = POST "$url", 
    [ 
      Value1 => 'Some value for 1', 
      Value2 => 'My value 2 result', 
      Value3 => 'My value 3'
    ];
  $request->referer("$httpReferer");

  # Post the request to the server
  my $response = $userAgent->request($request)->as_string;

  return ($response);
}
[download]

Test.asp

Take the code below and rename it "test.asp" off the root of your web server (running IIS) to verify that the contents you POSTed to the web page are in fact being accepted by the page you are submitting to:

This page writes out POSTed FORM values:

<P>
<%
Call WriteQueryStringContents()

Sub WriteQueryStringContents
    Dim strItem
    
    Response.Write CHR(10) & "<P>" & CHR(10)
    Response.Write "QueryString contents:" & CHR(10)
    For Each strItem In Request.QueryString 
        Response.Write "<LI>" & strItem & ": "
        Response.Write Request.QueryString(strItem) & "</LI>" & CHR(10
+)
    Next
    
    Response.Write CHR(10) & "<P>" & CHR(10)
    Response.Write "Form contents:" & CHR(10)
    For Each strItem In Request.Form 
        Response.Write "<LI>" & strItem & ": "
        Response.Write Request.Form(strItem) & "</LI>" & CHR(10)
    Next
    
End Sub
%>
</P>
[download]

Example

Here's the results we get when we run this simple Perl program:

E:\Personal>perl http_post.pl
Posting to the page 'http://localhost/Test.asp'.
Dispaying POSTed results:
======================================================================
+==
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private
Connection: Keep-Alive
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 20:54:11 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Content-Length: 201
Content-Type: text/html
Client-Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 20:54:11 GMT
Client-Peer: 127.0.0.1:80
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDQGGGQNOK=LEDDBLNAMNEONOJLKHFDFANJ; path=/

This page writes out POSTed FORM values:

<P>

<P>
QueryString contents:

<P>
Form contents:
<LI>Value1: Some value for 1</LI>
<LI>Value2: My value 2 result</LI>
<LI>Value3: My value 3</LI>

</P>


======================================================================
+==
[download]

As you can see, the three values we POSTed to the page Test.asp were successfully received and displayed.

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