my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $user, $password)
  or die "Couldn't connect to database: " . DBI->errstr;
[download]

Here you test that the connection has succeeded and bail out if it hasn't. This is good. However, on the subsequent 4 $dbh->do statements you make no such tests. How can you tell if one or more of these have failed?

my $SQL = "select url,document_id FROM $tablename where left(publish_d
+ate,6) ='$date'";
my $query = $dbh->prepare($SQL) or die "prepare: ".$dbh->errstr;
$query-> execute() or die "execute: ".$dbh->errstr;
[download]

No reason at all not to use a placeholder here:

my $SQL = "select url,document_id FROM $tablename where left(publish_d
+ate,6) = ?";
my $query = $dbh->prepare($SQL) or die "prepare: ".$dbh->errstr;
$query-> execute($date) or die "execute: ".$dbh->errstr;
[download]

it runs with no errors, it just doesn't download

Does it print the URL correctly each time through the loop or not?

However, on the subsequent 4 $dbh->do statements you make no such tests.

... and with a little bit of RTFM, none of those tests is needed. Change

my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $user, $password)
  or die "Couldn't connect to database: " . DBI->errstr;
[download]

to

my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $user, $password, { RaiseError => 1, Prin
+tError => 0 })
  or die "Couldn't connect to database: " . DBI->errstr;
[download]

and DBI will automatically check for errors, no manual checks needed.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

you are right. it doesn't print the url. it just exits after printing url: But the table has the correct url in the field url.

so this is the code where there is an issue.

 
while ($url = $query->fetchrow_array()) {
   print "url: $row->{url}\n";
   # logic to get unique filename for output
     my $outfile = $path.$document_id;
   print $outfile;
   my $ff = File::Fetch->new( uri => url );
   $ff->fetch(to => $outfile) or die "failed to fetch '$url' to '$outf
+ile'.";
[download]

ok. I am getting somewhere. here is the code:

 while (my $ref = $query->fetchrow_hashref()) {
   print "url: $ref->{url}\n";

   my $ff = File::Fetch->new(uri=> '$ref' );
   my $where = $ff->fetch(to => '/data'| \$scalar) ;
[download]

when I run it with the where commented out, it prints the correct URL's, but errors out on each one with hostname required when fetching from ''

running it with the $where uncommented, I get the same error, but it drops out on the first line of data with a can't call method Fetch on an undefined value.