Accessing websites with Perl

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

I am trying to write a program that will download one web page from the internet based on user supplied settings and save it as a text file (the web page is a table of data). I have found several programs that troll through websites and their links and some that even download pictures but none that do what I want. Is there any literature you suggest reading (or already written programs that you suggest) to help me in my quest?

Comment on Accessing websites with Perl

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Re: Accessing websites with Perl by jdporter (Paladin) on Feb 03, 2009 at 01:54 UTC
The LWP bundle has the basic building blocks; for complicated web interactions, you'll probably need WWW::Mechanize. Between the mind which plans and the hands which build, there must be a mediator... and this mediator must be the heart.	[reply]
Re: Accessing websites with Perl by planetscape (Chancellor) on Feb 03, 2009 at 14:43 UTC
Perhaps you would find the book Web Client Programming with Perl, full text freely available from the O'Reilly Open Books Project, useful in your quest. HTH, planetscape	[reply]
Re: Accessing websites with Perl by tomfahle (Priest) on Feb 03, 2009 at 16:17 UTC
As others mentioned before LWP and WWW::Mechanize are your friends. HTML::TableExtract is for extracting the content contained in tables within an HTML document, either as text or encoded element trees. Perl & LWP by Sean M. Burke is an online book covering the basics. Hope this helps, Thomas	[reply]


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