Provided by: libwww-mechanize-perl_1.73-1_all 
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.
Starbucks Density Calculator, by Nat Torkington
Here's a pair of programs from Nat Torkington, editor for O'Reilly Media and co-author of
the Perl Cookbook.
Rael [Dornfest] discovered that you can easily find out how many Starbucks there are
in an area by searching for "Starbucks". So I wrote a silly scraper for some old
census data and came up with some Starbucks density figures. There's no meaning to
these numbers thanks to errors from using old census data coupled with false positives
in Yahoo search (e.g., "Dodie Starbuck-Your Style Desgn" in Portland OR). But it was
fun to waste a night on.
Here are the top twenty cities in descending order of population, with the amount of
territory each Starbucks has. E.g., A New York NY Starbucks covers 1.7 square miles
of ground.
New York, NY 1.7
Los Angeles, CA 1.2
Chicago, IL 1.0
Houston, TX 4.6
Philadelphia, PA 6.8
San Diego, CA 2.7
Detroit, MI 19.9
Dallas, TX 2.7
Phoenix, AZ 4.1
San Antonio, TX 12.3
San Jose, CA 1.1
Baltimore, MD 3.9
Indianapolis, IN 12.1
San Francisco, CA 0.5
Jacksonville, FL 39.9
Columbus, OH 7.3
Milwaukee, WI 5.1
Memphis, TN 15.1
Washington, DC 1.4
Boston, MA 0.5
"get_pop_data"
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use WWW::Mechanize;
use Storable;
$url = 'http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027.html';
$m = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$m->get($url);
$c = $m->content;
$c =~ m{<A NAME=.tabA.>(.*?)</TABLE>}s
or die "Can't find the population table\n";
$t = $1;
@outer = $t =~ m{<TR.*?>(.*?)</TR>}gs;
shift @outer;
foreach $r (@outer) {
@bits = $r =~ m{<TD.*?>(.*?)</TD>}gs;
for ($x = 0; $x < @bits; $x++) {
$b = $bits[$x];
@v = split /\s*<BR>\s*/, $b;
foreach (@v) { s/^\s+//; s/\s+$// }
push @{$data[$x]}, @v;
}
}
for ($y = 0; $y < @{$data[0]}; $y++) {
$data{$data[1][$y]} = {
NAME => $data[1][$y],
RANK => $data[0][$y],
POP => comma_free($data[2][$y]),
AREA => comma_free($data[3][$y]),
DENS => comma_free($data[4][$y]),
};
}
store(\%data, "cities.dat");
sub comma_free {
my $n = shift;
$n =~ s/,//;
return $n;
}
"plague_of_coffee"
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use WWW::Mechanize;
use strict;
use Storable;
$SIG{__WARN__} = sub {} ; # ssssssh
my $Cities = retrieve("cities.dat");
my $m = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$m->get("http://local.yahoo.com/");
my @cities = sort { $Cities->{$a}{RANK} <=> $Cities->{$b}{RANK} } keys %$Cities;
foreach my $c ( @cities ) {
my $fields = {
'stx' => "starbucks",
'csz' => $c,
};
my $r = $m->submit_form(form_number => 2,
fields => $fields);
die "Couldn't submit form" unless $r->is_success;
my $hits = number_of_hits($r);
# my $ppl = sprintf("%d", 1000 * $Cities->{$c}{POP} / $hits);
# print "$c has $hits Starbucks. That's one for every $ppl people.\n";
my $density = sprintf("%.1f", $Cities->{$c}{AREA} / $hits);
print "$c : $density\n";
}
sub number_of_hits {
my $r = shift;
my $c = $r->content;
if ($c =~ m{\d+ out of <b>(\d+)</b> total results for}) {
return $1;
}
if ($c =~ m{Sorry, no .*? found in or near}) {
return 0;
}
if ($c =~ m{Your search matched multiple cities}) {
warn "Your search matched multiple cities\n";
return 0;
}
if ($c =~ m{Sorry we couldn.t find that location}) {
warn "No cities\n";
return 0;
}
if ($c =~ m{Could not find.*?, showing results for}) {
warn "No matches\n";
return 0;
}
die "Unknown response\n$c\n";
}
pb-upload, by John Beppu
This program takes filenames of images from the command line and uploads them to a
www.photobucket.com folder. John Beppu, the author, says:
I had 92 pictures I wanted to upload, and doing it through a browser would've been
torture. But thanks to mech, all I had to do was `./pb.upload *.jpg` and watch it do
its thing. It felt good. If I had more time, I'd implement WWW::Photobucket on top
of WWW::Mechanize.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w -T
use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;
my $login = "login_name";
my $password = "password";
my $folder = "folder";
my $url = "http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v281/$login/$folder/";
# login to your photobucket.com account
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$mech->get($url);
$mech->submit_form(
form_number => 1,
fields => { password => $password },
);
die unless ($mech->success);
# upload image files specified on command line
foreach (@ARGV) {
print "$_\n";
$mech->form_number(2);
$mech->field('the_file[]' => $_);
$mech->submit();
}
listmod, by Ian Langworth
Ian Langworth contributes this little gem that will bring joy to beleaguered mailing list
admins. It discards spam messages through mailman's web interface.
#!/arch/unix/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
#
# listmod - fast alternative to mailman list interface
#
# usage: listmod crew XXXXXXXX
#
die "usage: $0 <listname> <password>\n" unless @ARGV == 2;
my ($listname, $password) = @ARGV;
use CGI qw(unescape);
use WWW::Mechanize;
my $m = WWW::Mechanize->new( autocheck => 1 );
use Term::ReadLine;
my $term = Term::ReadLine->new($0);
# submit the form, get the cookie, go to the list admin page
$m->get("https://lists.ccs.neu.edu/bin/admindb/$listname");
$m->set_visible( $password );
$m->click;
# exit if nothing to do
print "There are no pending requests.\n" and exit
if $m->content =~ /There are no pending requests/;
# select the first form and examine its contents
$m->form_number(1);
my $f = $m->current_form or die "Couldn't get first form!\n";
# get me the base form element for each email item
my @items = map {m/^.+?-(.+)/} grep {m/senderbanp/} $f->param
or die "Couldn't get items in first form!\n";
# iterate through items, prompt user, commit actions
foreach my $item (@items) {
# show item info
my $sender = unescape($item);
my ($subject) = [$f->find_input("senderbanp-$item")->value_names]->[1]
=~ /Subject:\s+(.+?)\s+Size:/g;
# prompt user
my $choice = '';
while ( $choice !~ /^[DAX]$/ ) {
print "$sender\: '$subject'\n";
$choice = uc $term->readline("Action: defer/accept/discard [dax]: ");
print "\n\n";
}
# set button
$m->field("senderaction-$item" => {D=>0,A=>1,X=>3}->{$choice});
}
# submit actions
$m->click;
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 program 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 program 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 = WWW::Mechanize->new;
$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/"/"/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_number(1);
$browser->field("query", $module_name);
$browser->click();
# click on the link that matches the module name
$browser->follow_link( text_regex => $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 strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;
# a tool to automatically post entries to a moveable type weblog, and set arbitrary 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_name('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_name('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:/;
$m->follow_link( n=>$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";
}