How do I use Perl's LWP to log in to a web application?

Question

I would like to write a script to login to a web application and then move to other parts of the application:

use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
use LWP::UserAgent;
use Data::Dumper;

$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(keep_alive=>1);

my $req = POST "http://example.com:5002/index.php",
[ user_name     => 'username',
  user_password => "password",
  module        => 'Users',
  action        => 'Authenticate',
  return_module => 'Users',
  return_action => 'Login',
];

my $res = $ua->request($req);
print Dumper(\$res);
if ( $res->is_success ) {
    print $res->as_string;
}

When I try this code I am not able to login to the application. The HTTP status code returned is 302 that is found, but with no data.

If I post username/password with all required things then it should return the home page of the application and keep the connection live to move other parts of the application.

Answer 1

You may be able to use WWW::Mechanize for this purpose:

Mech supports performing a sequence of page fetches including following links and submitting forms. Each fetched page is parsed and its links and forms are extracted. A link or a form can be selected, form fields can be filled and the next page can be fetched. Mech also stores a history of the URLs you've visited, which can be queried and revisited.