WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::Snapshot - Snapshot the Mech object's state

This document describes WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::Snapshot version 0.01

    use WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable;
    my $mech->new;
    $mech->snapshots_to("/some/file/path");
    $mech->get("http://problematic.org");
    # Create timestamped snapshot
    $snapshot_file_name = $mech->snapshot("Accessing problematic.org");

    # Create user-named snapshot
    $foo_file = $mech->snapshot("Special file", "foo");

    # Preset the comment:
    $mech->snapshot_comment("Failed during test set 1");

    # Resulting file uses the comment preset before the 
    # snapshot call.
    $standard_name = $mech->snapshot();

    # Use a different filename. keeping the preset comment:
    $foo_file = $mech->snapshot(undef, "foo");

WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::Snapshot is a Web debugging plugin. It allows you to selectively dump the results of an HTTP request to files that can be displayed in a browser, showing not only the web page at the time of the request, but also

* Arbitrary comment information from the user (as text).

* The URL of the request.

* A formatted copy of the HTTP request

* A formatted HTTP response (less the actual content and the request)

* The current contents of the cookie jar

* The actual web page content

The output is displayed in a frame, with the debug information on the left and the actual page HTML as fetched at the time of the snapshot on the right.

Standard importation of methods into WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable.

Requires a directory to which the snapshots will be taken. To separate different runs, a subdirectory of this directory will be created, using a human-readable form of the current time as part of the name.

If this method is not called prior to the use of snapshot, the system default temporary file directory is used. If no such directory is defined in the TMP or TMPDIR environment variables, snapshots_to dies.

Takes a snapshot of the current state of the WWW::Mechanize object contained in the WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable object.

Allows you to choose an alternative layout for the snapshots. Current options are "horizontal" and "vertical" (the default).

No TMPDIR/TEMP defined on this system!

You called snapshots_to without a temporary directory, but no system temporary directory name was available to the program. Either call snapshots_to with a writeable directory name, or set the TMP or TMPDIR environment variable to reflect the desired name.

Couldn't create directory %s: %s

The program couldn't create the directory you specified. A diagnostic follows the colon to help you find out why not.

%s is not a directory

The argument you supplied to snapshots_to is not a directory.

No HTML output file name supplied

Internal error: _build_file wasn't given a file into which output is to be saved. Please contact the author.

No customization hash supplied

Internal error: _build_file was not supplied with the information to fill out the template. Please contact the author.

Nonexistent template %s

Internal error: _build_file was supplied with a bad file template. Please contact the author.

Can't write to %s file %s: $!

We attempted to take a snapshot, but we couldn't write the file to the selected temporary directory. The contents of $! are appended to try to diagnose the error further.

WWW::Mechanize::Plugin::Snapshot requires no configuration files.

It needs the TMP or TMPDIR environment variable to select the system temporary directory if no argument is supplied to snapshots_to.

Since this is a WWW::Mechanize::Pluggable plugin, that module is required.

None reported.

No bugs have been reported.

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-www-mechanize-plugin-snapshot@rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org.

Joe McMahon <mcmahon@yahoo-inc.com >

Copyright (c) 2005, Joe McMahon <mcmahon@yahoo-inc.com >. All rights reserved.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic.

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