CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perlhyperlinkwww-mechanize-firefox
Malincy Montoya
Malincy Montoya

Reputation: 87

WWW::Mechanize::Firefox follow_link not working

I'm trying to follow a link in Perl. My initial code:

use WWW::Mechanize::Firefox;
use Crypt::SSLeay;
use HTML::TagParser;
use URI::Fetch;
$ENV{PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME}=0; #not verifying certificate
my $url = 'https://';
$url = $url.@ARGV[0]; 

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize::Firefox->new;
$mech->get($url);

$mech->follow_link(tag => 'a', text => '<span class=\"normalNode\">VSCs</span>');
$mech->reload();

I found here that the tag and text options work this way but I got the error MozRepl::RemoteObject: SyntaxError: The expression is not a legal expression. I tried to escape some characters in the text, but the error was still the same. Then I changed my code adding:

my @list = $mech->find_all_links();
my $found = 0;
my $i=0;
while($i<=$#list && $found == 0){
    print @list[$i]->url()."\n";
    if(@list[$i]->text() =~ /VSCs/){
    print @list[$i]->text()."\n";
    my $follow =@list[$i]->url();
    $mech->follow_link( url => $follow);
}
    $i++;
}

But then again there's an error: No link found matching '//a[(@href = "https://... and a lot of more text that seems to be the link's description. I hope I made myself clear, if not, please tell me what else to add. Thanks to all for your help.

Here's the part where the link I want to follow is:

<li id="1" class="liClosed"><span class="bullet clickable">&#160;</span><b><a href="/centcfg/vsc_list.asp?entity=allvsc&amp;selector=All"><span class="normalNode">VSCs</span></a></b>
      <ul id="1.l1">
        <li id="i1.i1" class="liBullet"><span class="bullet">&#160;</span><b><a href="/centcfg/vsc_edit.asp?entity=vsc&amp;selector=1"><span class="normalNode">First</span></a></b></li>
        <li id="i1.i2" class="liBullet"><span class="bullet">&#160;</span><b><a href="/centcfg/vsc_edit.asp?entity=vsc&amp;selector=2"><span class="normalNode">Second</span></a></b></li>
        <li id="i1.i3" class="liBullet"><span class="bullet">&#160;</span><b><a href="/centcfg/vsc_edit.asp?entity=vsc&amp;selector=3"><span class="normalNode">Third</span></a></b></li>
        <li id="i1.i4" class="liBullet"><span class="bullet">&#160;</span><b><a href="/centcfg/vsc_edit.asp?entity=vsc&amp;selector=4"><span class="normalNode">Fourth</span></a></b></li>
        <li id="i1.i5" class="liBullet"><span class="bullet">&#160;</span><b><a href="/centcfg/vsc_edit.asp?entity=vsc&amp;selector=5"><span class="normalNode">None</span></a></b></li>
</ul>

I'm working in Windows 7, MozRepl is version 1.1 and I'm using Strawberry perl 5.16.2.1 for 64 bits

Upvotes: 3

Views: 892

Answers (2)

Nikolay A
Nikolay A

Reputation: 51

After poking around with the given code I was able to make W::M::F to follow the links in a following manner:

use WWW::Mechanize::Firefox;
use Crypt::SSLeay;
use HTML::TagParser;
use URI::Fetch;

...

$mech->follow_link(xpath => '//a[text() = "<span class=\"normalNode\">VSCs</span>"]');
$mech->reload();

Note xpath parameter given instead of text.

I didn't take a long look into W::M::F sources, but under the hood it tries to translate given text parameter into XPath string, and if text contains number of XML/HTML tags, which is your case, it probably drives him crazy.

Upvotes: 2

Gilles Qu&#233;not
Gilles Qu&#233;not

Reputation: 185073

I recommend you to try :

$mech->follow_link( url_regex => qr/selector=All/ );

Upvotes: 0

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