Re: curl equivalence
Re: curl equivalence
- Subject: Re: curl equivalence
- From: "John R." <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:16:11 -0400
Thanks for the response - comments below
on Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:48:25 kai wrote
> Doesn't this do about the same thing, John?
> to getHTML from myURL
> tell application "Safari" to tell document 1
> set URL to myURL
> repeat 40 times
> if URL is myURL then return source
> delay 0.5
> end repeat
> end tell
> error "Oops - problem accessing internet..."
> end GetHTML
>
> getHTML from "http://www.apple.com/";
I thought so too at an early, naive stage in my journey, but...
(1) Websites often redirect to different URLs, and the resulting URL can include unknowns like, say, a session ID#.
(2) If you poll the Safari's URL property too soon, it never starts at all!
on Tue, 25 Oct 2005 20:06:39 Daniel Jalkut wrote:
> I'm pretty confident you can get curl to work. You have to
> essentially use curl to build up a "cookie file" that is specific to
> the site, and always direct curl to use that cookie file as a "send/
> receive" stash for that site.
Yup, thats what the manual says. In order to emulate my real browser in curl, I need to give the correct parameters for authentication, for cookie format, for user-agent, for forms data submission, etc. I never could get all these functions to work right and I spent a lot of time reverse engineering. My biggest frustration was not getting good feedback from curl or the site about what I was doing wrong. Maybe there are some curl or Unix secrets I do not know?
> But you are sending a mixed message here. Curl would be wonderful,
> but Safari is better because you can see it. Which would you prefer? :)
Let me be clear: curl would be wonderful automation because I call with confidence and simply wait for text returned. I was motivated enough to learn perl basics and play with LWP::Mechanize. It has a CPAN module claiming to allow use of Safari's own cookie file, eliminating that headache. I am sure they do work somehow, but I ran into the same problem: all those picky parameters. I found visualizing how the sites react to my strange requests helps with debugging. But let me be clear again: I don't want to debug - I want to get the HTML!
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