How to navigate Web Pages in Perl using WWW::Mechanize and dropdowns? - perl

Question

I am having a problem, what i am trying to do is:
I open a webpage with WWW::Mechanize, fill the username and password and log in.
The issue I am having is, after logging in I have to select the value from a dropdown list
and after that I have to press submit.
How can i do that?
The code which i have used is:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use LWP::UserAgent;
use WWW::Mechanize;
use HTTP::Cookies;
use strict;
my $username="123456";
my $password="XXXXX";
my $project="Systems";
my $agent = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$agent->get('http://www.XXXXX.com');
$agent->form_name("login_form");
$agent->field("txtLoginId", $username);
$agent->field("txtPassword", $password);
$agent->submit();
#Till now it has success full logined, From here it has to select one value from a drop #down box
$agent->form_name("frmProject");
$agent->field("cboProject", $project);
my $response=$agent->submit();
if ($response->is_success){
print "\nContent:\n";
print $response->as_string;
}elsif ($response->is_error){
print $response->error_as_HTML;
}

Answer 1

WWW::Mechanize has a click method that you can use to click on a button. Or, study the submit_form method for which you can specify values of all the form elements. If the page uses javascript, WWW:Mechanize might be not suitable for your task (see for example WWW::Mechanize::Firefox for an alternative).

Answer 2

You need to use the select method. If you know the value (not the display-text), use this:
$agent->form_name("frmProject");
$agent->select('cboProject', $project);
my $response = $agent->submit();
If you don't take a look at the Mechanize FAQ. It says you have to do something like this:
# Find the correct input element
my ($projectlist) = $agent->find_all_inputs( name => 'cboProject' );
# Look up the value of the option
my %name_lookup;
#name_lookup{ $projectlist->value_names } = $projectlist->possible_values;
# use the display-text to get the correct value
my $value = $name_lookup{ $project };
Once you've done that, you can use the click-method to submit the page.
$agent->click_button('name_of_the_submit_button');
But if the button you have to click is the default action, $agent->submit() should do the trick as well.