Re: Dynamic Forms, Javascript (what else!) and WWW::Mechanize

Peter Stevens <[email protected]> writes:

>            The problem is that when the page is first displayed
> (i.e. before the javascript [doesn't] execute, these form variables
> don't exist. They are apparently created by the javascript. So when I
> try
> 
>     $mech->field('min', $telno ) ;
> 
> I get an error from HTML::Form:
> 
>     No such field 'min' at
>     /home/mmtest/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/WWW/Mechanize.pm line 1030
>      at /home/mmtest/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/HTML/Form.pm line 402
> 
> So it looks like I just need to convince HTML::Form to create some new
> fields, but I couldn't find how to do this. Can anybody explain?

You could try to use the undocumented 'push_input' method.  It's not
doucmented because I did not think anybody would have a reason to
modify the form, but as this problem demonstrates there is certainly
use cases.  HTML::Form should grow an official API to modify the form
structure.

This is a short demo of how you can add fields with the current
version:

    #/usr/bin/perl -w

    use strict;
    use HTML::Form;
    my $f = HTML::Form->parse(<<EOT, "http://www.example.com");
    <form>
       <input name="foo" value=1>
    </form>
    EOT
    
    $f->push_input("text", { name => "bar" });
    $f->value(bar => 2);
    
    print $f->click->as_string;

Regards,
Gisle