practical Perl tools: be the browser

In this article we're going to focus on using just the module WWW::Mechanize and the modules in its orbit. There are other modules out there for performing tasks like the ones we're going to explore, but I've not found one to date that I've liked better than WWW::Mechanize. I should note that I'm not the only person enamored of this module. Mech, as it is affectionately called, has been reimplemented in several other of your favorite languages: py-mechanize (in Python) and WWW::Mechanize (in Ruby). The boundary between Perl and Ruby is actually porous in both directions. We're not going to look at it in this column, but WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::Web::Scraper lets you use the module Web::Scraper from WWW::Mechanize. Web::Scraper takes its design from the excellent Ruby-based scrAPI toolkit.