WWW::Mechanize and Cookies

Question

I use WWW::Mechanize::Shell to test stuff. Since I didn't managed to sign in on a web site I want to scrape, I thought I will use the browser cookie (chrome or firefox) for that specific website with the 'cookie' command WWW::Mechanize::Shell has.

The question is, Cookies usually stored in a single file, which is not good, how to get a cookie for only this specific site?

thanks,

Answer 1

Why isn't storing cookies in a file good?

Since WWW::Mechanize is built on top of LWP::UserAgent, you handle cookies just like you do in LWP::UserAgent. You can make the cookie jar a file or an in-memory hash.

If you don't want to save the cookies in a file, use an empty hash reference when you construct the mech object:

 use WWW::Mechanize;

 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new( cookie_jar => {} );

If you want to use a new file, make a new HTTP::Cookies object:

 use WWW::Mechanize;

 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new( 
     cookie_jar => HTTP::Cookies->new( file => "$ENV{HOME}/.cookies.txt" ) 
     );

If you want to load a browser specific cookies file, use the right module for it:

 use WWW::Mechanize;

 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new( 
     cookie_jar => HTTP::Cookies::Netscape->new( file => $filename ) 
     );

If you want no cookies at all, use undef explicitly:

 use WWW::Mechanize;

 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new( cookie_jar => undef );

All of this is in the docs.

Answer 2

HTTP::Cookies::Netscape, HTTP::Cookies::Microsoft load your existing browser cookies.