CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyweb-scrapingmechanize
Ben Gitter
Ben Gitter

Reputation: 31

Locating a form with Mechanize in ruby

require 'rubygems'
require 'nokogiri'
require 'mechanize'

agent = Mechanize.new

page = agent.get('https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/')
forms = page.forms.first
pp form

I am trying to locate the form to login to the instagram website. I cannot seem to get mechanize to locate the form even though it should be the only one on the page. When I pretty print the page I get back blank output.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 309

Answers (1)

max pleaner
max pleaner

Reputation: 26758

This page uses Javascript to render the form, which mechanize doesn't run. If you want to see what a page looks like without Javascript, you can open it with the lynx browser.

Selenium can be used instead. After installing a driver such as for chrome (see here), the API is pretty similar:

driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome
driver.navigate.to "https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/"
first_form = driver.find_elements(css: "form")[0]

Upvotes: 1

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