How do I use Perl's LWP to log in to a web application?
lwp, perl, www-mechanize
Solution
You may be able to use WWW::Mechanize for this purpose:
Mech supports performing a sequence of page fetches including following links and submitting forms. Each fetched page is parsed and its links and forms are extracted. A link or a form can be selected, form fields can be filled and the next page can be fetched. Mech also stores a history of the URLs you've visited, which can be queried and revisited.
Problem
I would like to write a script to login to a web application and then move to other parts of the application: ``` use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST); use LWP::UserAgent; use Data::Dumper; $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(keep_alive=>1); my $req = POST "http://example.com:5002/index.php", [ user_name => 'username', user_password => "password", module => 'Users', action => 'Authenticate', return_module => 'Users', return_action => 'Login', ]; my $res = $ua->request($req); print Dumper(\$res); if ( $res->is_success ) { print $res->as_string; } ``` When I try this code I am not able to login to the application. The HTTP status code returned is 302 that is found, but with no data. If I post username/password with all required things then it should return the home page of the application and keep the connection live to move other parts of the application.