Re: Parsing a form with identical field names

On Jul 16, 2011, at 9:30 PM, David White wrote:

> On further investigation, it might just be a limit (bug?) of
> WWW::Mechanize.  Consider this form:
> 
>  <input type="text" name="myfield" value="One">
>  <input type="text" name="myfield" value="Two">
>  <input type="text" name="myfield" value="Three">
> 
> and this Perl snippet:
> 
>  my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
>  $mech->get('http://www.example.com/form.html');
>  $mech->form_with_fields('myfield');
>  $mech->click();
> 
> The value for "myfield" passed to the form handler will contain all 3
> values (e.g. an array of "One","Two","Three" in Perl, PHP, etc.)
> 
> Now consider this form:
> 
>  <select name="myfield"><option value="One">One</option></select>
>  <select name="myfield"><option value="Two">Two</option></select>
>  <select name="myfield"><option value="Three">Three</option></select>
> 
> If this form is submitted by a browser (I tried FF3.6 and IE8), the
> form handler will again receive an "myfield" array of
> "One","Two","Three".  If submitted via WWW::Mechanize, however, the
> handler will receive only a value of "One".
> 
> A bug, perhaps?
> 
> Incidentally, if the form is rewritten this way, with each box having
> its first (and only) item selected:
> 
>  <select name="myfield"><option value="One" selected>One</option></
> select>
>  <select name="myfield"><option value="Two" selected>Two</option></
> select>
>  <select name="myfield"><option value="Three" selected>Three</
> option></select>
> 
> FF3.6 and IE8 will return the same results ("One","Two","Three"), but
> WWW::Mechanize will now send a "myfield" value of "Three" to the form
> handler.

I just tried that out with WWW::Scripter (a Mech subclass), and it doesn’t have that problem. It uses a different module (HTML::DOM) for form serialisation. Mech uses HTML::Form. Maybe it’s an HTML::Form bug (cc'ing the LWP list).


> 
> On Jul 16, 7:44 pm, David White <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Andy, thanks for the reply.  There's no JavaScript involved - rather,
>> I think Koha is relying on a feature of CGI.pm usually intended to
>> handle <select multiple> boxes.
>> 
>> For example, this form:
>> 
>>   <select name="foo"><option value="One">One</option></select><br>
>>   <select name="foo"><option value="Two">Three</option></select><br>
>>   <select name="foo"><option value="Three">Three</option></select><br>
>> 
>> processed with this Perl code:
>> 
>>   use CGI qw(:all);
>>   my $q = new CGI;
>>   my @boxvals = $q->param('foo');
>>   foreach my $boxval (@boxvals) {
>>       print "A select box value was '$boxval'<br>\n";
>>   }
>> 
>> will generate:
>> 
>>   A select box value was 'One'
>>   A select box value was 'Two'
>>   A select box value was 'Three'
>> 
>> So far so good.  The question is then how to access, say, the second
>> <select> box and set its value while leaving the rest of them alone.
>> 
>> Thanks again.
>> 
>> On Jul 16, 7:10 pm, Andy Lester <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jul 15, 2011, at 11:14 PM, David White wrote:
>> 
>>>> My goal is to pick a particular <select> box (say, the third one),
>>>> select the 7th option in its list, and submit the form. However with
>>>> the <select> boxes having the same name (albeit different "id" tags),
>>>> I cannot figure out how to specify to WWW::Mechanize the precise box
>>>> that I want.

You could set it this way:

# Here $mech is a WWW::Scripter object.
$mech->current_form->{$sel_name}[2]->options->[6]->selected(1);

If that doesn’t work, try this:

(
  $mech->current_form->look_down( # an HTML::Element method
      _tag  => 'select',
       name => $sel_name,
  )
)[2]->options->[6]->selected(1);