WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::Ajax - WWW::Mechanize plugin that provides the XMLHttpRequest object

Version 0.05 (alpha)

  use WWW::Mechanize;
  $m = new WWW::Mechanize;

  $m->use_plugin('Ajax');
  $m->get('http://some.site.com/that/relies/on/ajax');

This module is a plugin for WWW::Mechanize that loads the JavaScript plugin (WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::JavaScript) and provides it with the XMLHttpRequest object.

To load the plugin, use WWW::Mechanize's use_plugin method, as shown in the Synopsis. (The current stable release of W:M doesn't support it; see PREREQUISITES, below.) Any extra arguments to use_plugin will be passed on to the JavaScript plugin (at least for now).

The XMLHttpRequest object currently does not support asynchronous connections. Later this will probably become an option, at least for threaded perls.

Since it uses LWP, URI schemes other than http (e.g., file, ftp) are supported.

The XMLHttpRequest interface members supported so far are:

  Methods:
  open
  send
  abort
  getAllResponseHeaders
  getResponseHeader
  setRequestHeader

  Attributes:
  onreadystatechange
  readyState
  responseText
  responseXML
  status
  statusText

  Event-Related Methods:
  addEventListener
  removeEventListener
  dispatchEvent

  Constants (static properties):
  UNSENT
  OPENED
  HEADERS_RECEIVED
  LOADING
  DONE

responseBody, overrideMimeType, getRequestHeader, removeRequestHeader and more event attributes are likely to be added in future versions.

This plugin requires perl 5.8.3 or higher, and the following modules:

• WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::JavaScript version 0.004 or later
• WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::DOM version 0.005 or later
• constant::lexical
• XML::DOM::Lite
• HTML::DOM version 0.013 or later
• Encode 2.09 or higher

And you'll also need the experimental version of WWW::Mechanize available at http://www-mechanize.googlecode.com/svn/wm/branches/plugins/

If you find any bugs, please report them to the author by e-mail (preferably with a patch :-).

XML::DOM::Lite is quite lenient toward badly-formed XML, so the responseXML property returns something useful even in cases when it should be null.

The send method does not yet accept a Document object as its argument. (Well, it does, but it stringifies it to '[object Document]' instead of serialising it as XML.)

The SECURITY_ERR, NETWORK_ERR and ABORT_ERR constants are not available yet, as I don't know where to put them.

In various other ways, it does not fully conform to the spec (which I only found out about recently). It would be quicker to fix them than to list them here. (And none of the Level 2 additions are implemented.)

Furthermore, this module follows the badly-designed API that is unfortunately the standard so I can't do anything about it.

Copyright (C) 2008 Father Chrysostomos <['sprout', ['org', 'cpan'].reverse().join('.')].join('@')>

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as perl.

WWW::Mechanize

WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::JavaScript

WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::DOM

XML::DOM::Lite

The XMLHttpRequest specification (draft as of August 2008): http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/

XMLHttpRequest Level 2: http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest2/