how to have perl get https website links to trigger cron job - perl

Question

Currently I have a perl script to trigger a cron job on multiple websites however the script is only working for http and not for https. In other words when the script tries to trigger a link on a domain with an SSL certificate, the cron never gets triggered. What is required to trigger the https cron URL?
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Enter domains, one per line.
#
# They do not have to be indented.
#
# Do not use an '#' on the beginning of your domains.
#
# Enter domains below next line: (without #)
my #domains = qw/#############################
#www.example.com
#www.example.com
#www.example.com
###############_END_OF_DOMAINS_###############/;
my $num_domains = 200; # number of domains
my $cycle_time = 900; # seconds per cycle
# So if $num_domain=200 and $cycle_time=900,
# there will be 4.5 seconds between sites.
# Nothing below here to service.....
#############################################################################
#############################################################################
#############################################################################
#############################################################################
use strict;
use warnings;
use IO::Socket;
use constant DEBUG => 0;
my $time_wait = $cycle_time / $num_domains;
my #stdin = -t STDIN
? ()
: grep !/^$/, map { s/^\s+//; s/\s+$//; s/\#.*?$//; $_ } <STDIN>
;
for my $site ( grep !/^\s*\#/, #domains, #stdin ) {
chomp $site;
print "contacting: $site\n" if DEBUG;
my $sock = IO::Socket::INET->new(
PeerHost => $site,
PeerPort => 'http(80)',
Proto => 'tcp',
Type => SOCK_STREAM,
Timeout => 10,
);
unless ( defined $sock ) {
warn "Couldn't connect to $site: $!\n" if DEBUG;
next;
}
#Example target:
# http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com_acymailing&ctrl=cron
print $sock
"GET /index.php?option=com_acymailing&ctrl=cron HTTP/1.0\n" .
"Host: $site\n\n"
;
# wait for response...
while (defined( $_ = scalar <$sock> )) {
# we dont care what it said...
print 'recv: ', $_ if DEBUG;
}
print "\ndone\n" if DEBUG;
$sock->close;
}
continue {
print "sleeping $time_wait seconds\n" if DEBUG;
select( undef, undef, undef, $time_wait );
}
__END__

Answer 1

It seems likely that the problem is because you're always configuring your socket object to use the HTTP port (PeerPort => 'http(80)'). The HTTPS port is 443, not 80.
But I have no idea why you would write code like this using low-level socket programming. You would be far better advised to look at something like LWP::Simple (you will also want to install LWP::Protocol::https for HTTPS support).