Mocking request headers with Test::WWW::Mechanize?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

How do I mock a request header when testing an app with Test::WWW::Mechanize?

My use case: I have a Catalyst app that, in one case, needs to grab a value from the hostname that's sending an API request. (Requests can come from something like forum_name.example.com and I need to extract "forum_name".)

How do I test this? When I use Test::WWW::Mechanize, all requests come from "localhost", but I need to try goodname.localhost to make sure that works, badname.localhost so I can reject an unconfigured name, etc.

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Re: Mocking request headers with Test::WWW::Mechanize? by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 25, 2021 at 14:10 UTC
Maybe you can set the `Host` header using the `->add_header( Host => 'my.example.com')` method from WWW::Mechanize? This should add/remove headers sent with every request.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Mocking request headers with Test::WWW::Mechanize? by Anonymous Monk on Oct 25, 2021 at 14:37 UTC
Wow! Yes, that was easy enough. I assumed `add_header` was only for additional headers, not for modifying the "core" headers. But that did it exactly. Thank you!	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Mocking request headers with Test::WWW::Mechanize? by perlfan (Vicar) on Oct 25, 2021 at 15:26 UTC
If you're grabbing just HTML, I know you know HTTP::Tiny is nice lite'r option. I've never actually needed to use Mechanize - though always wanted to. I seem to have gone from just parsing HTML or JSON with `LWP` or `HTTP::Tiny` to using something like Playwright or Firefox::Marionette for interaction. Web::Scraper is super handy here. I know the "dream" is to have browserless browser objects, but frankly I don't know how this kind of thing can be sustainable - I think it's a miracle Mechanize still exists.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Mocking request headers with Test::WWW::Mechanize? by Anonymous Monk on Oct 25, 2021 at 15:31 UTC
Well, in this case, everything is already set up with an elaborate structure and thousands of Mechanize-based tests, so the issue was solely how to do this one thing. I'll leave the restructuring of the entire app to the guy who comes after me :-)	[reply]
Re^3: Mocking request headers with Test::WWW::Mechanize? by perlfan (Vicar) on Oct 25, 2021 at 16:58 UTC
Indeed - like I said, I've always wanted to use Machanize, so now I'm just showing my envy. Dealing with "real" browsers is about as satisfying as one can suspect.	[reply]


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