Re: Re: Re: suck on www::mechanize question

OK, further investigation suggests that it's not one bad link, but that the server just sometimes returns a 500 error. Other times it succeeds. If I run my script several times, it will sometimes succeed and sometimes fail -- and I get the same results if I try to follow the link several times in my browser.

I was able to get around it like this:

my $maxtries = 10;
my $i = 1;
while ($i <= $maxtries) {
    $mech->follow_link(text => "Hey Jude (lennon/mccartney)", n => "1"
+);
    last if $mech->success;
    $mech->back();
    $i++;
}

$mech->success() or die "Can't find song page\n";
[download]

Of course, you can set $maxtries to whatever you think is prudent, and you can put in a sleep() in the loop if you think that might help.

Linda

Comment on Re: Re: Re: suck on www::mechanize question Select or Download Code

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STUCK on www::mechanize ->get() by smackdab (Pilgrim) on Mar 01, 2004 at 22:13 UTC
Thanks again for the help I tried your string 200 times w/o success and it works every time in the browser...Don't know what I could be doing wrong... I don't think it is the lyrics web site as the first ->get() works, it is just the 2nd one that fails... The link that failes in www:mechanize is: http://display.lyrics.astraweb.com:2000/display.cgi?beatles..beatles_1..hey_jude This URL works in my browser always... Here is my complete test program incase someone else wants to give it a try ;-) use WWW::Mechanize; use URI::URL; use strict; use warnings; my $artist = 'The Beatles'; my $title = 'Hey Jude'; my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new(autocheck=>1); #$mech->agent_alias('Windows IE 6'); my $search = join("+", split(/ /, $artist)) . "+" . join("+", split(/ +/, $title)); print "search=" . "http://search.lyrics.astraweb.com/?word=$search" . + "\n"; $mech->get("http://search.lyrics.astraweb.com/?word=$search"); $mech->success() or die "Can't get the search page\n"; $mech->follow_link(text=>"Hey Jude"); #$mech->follow_link(n=>6); $mech->success() or die "Can't find lyrics page\n"; [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: STUCK on www::mechanize ->get() by leira (Monk) on Mar 01, 2004 at 22:30 UTC
Your script works for me as often as following the like works for me in a browser. I'd suggest that you try to get some more information about what's going on. Instead of just `die`-ing after a failure, you might try printing out `$mech->status` and/or `$mech->content` to see if that sheds any light on what's going on. Sorry I can't be of more help. Linda	[reply] [d/l] [select]


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