Perl script for Downloading the file from web - perl

Question

I am trying to automate one of my task where i have to download a last 5 releases of some softwares let say Google talk from http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_talk/.
I have never done such type of programming i mean, to interact with Web through perl .I have just read and came to know that through CGI module we can implement this thing so i tried with this module.
If some body can give me better advice then please you are welcome :)
My code :
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
use CGI::Carp qw/fatalsToBrowser/;
my $path_to_files = 'http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_talk/download/298ba15362f425c3ac48ffbda96a6156';
my $q = CGI->new;
my $file = $q->param('file') or error('Error: No file selected.');
print "$file\n";
if ($file =~ /^(\w+[\w.-]+\.\w+)$/) {
$file = $1;
}
else {
error('Error: Unexpected characters in filename.');
}
if ($file) {
download($file) or error('Error: an unknown error has occured. Try again.');
}
sub download
{
open(DLFILE, '<', "$path_to_files/$file") or return(0);
print $q->header(-type => 'application/x-download',
-attachment => $file,
'Content-length' => -s "$path_to_files/$file",
);
binmode DLFILE;
print while <DLFILE>;
close (DLFILE);
return(1);
}
sub error {
print $q->header(),
$q->start_html(-title=>'Error'),
$q->h1($_[0]),
$q->end_html;
exit(0);
}
In above code i am trying to print the file name which i wan to download but it is displaying error message.I am not able to figure it out why this error "Error: No file selected." is comming.

Answer 1

Sorry, but you are in the wrong track. Your best bet is this module: http://metacpan.org/pod/WWW::Mechanize
This page contain a lot of example to start with: http://metacpan.org/pod/WWW::Mechanize::Examples
It could be more elegant but I think this code easier to understand.
use strict;
use warnings;
my $path_to_files = 'http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_talk/download/298ba15362f425c3ac48ffbda96a6156';
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$mech->get( $path_to_files );
$mech->save_content( "download_google_talk.html" );#save the base to see how it looks like
foreach my $link ( $mech->links() ){ #walk all links
print "link: $link\n";
if ($link =~ m!what_you_want!i){ #if it match
my $fname = $link;
$fname =~ s!\A.*/!! if $link =~ m!/!;
$fname .= ".zip"; #add extension
print "Download $link to $fname\n";
$mech->get($link,":content_file" => "$fname" );#download the file and stoore it in a fname.
}
}