[Chicago-talk] www::mechanize sputters, starts, pauses, and hangs

[Jay Strauss]

Hi,

Anyone know why I get such erratic behavior with www::mech when talking to
Ameritrade?  The little script below produces:

[o901]:~/bin> date; ./d; date
Sat Mar 20 10:44:23 CST 2004
done loginning in
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
<cntl-c>
Sat Mar 20 10:44:41 CST 2004
[o901]:~/bin> date; ./d; date
Sat Mar 20 10:44:51 CST 2004
done loginning in
page retrieval: 1
page retrieval: 1
<cntl-c>
Sat Mar 20 10:44:58 CST 2004

#!/usr/bin/perl

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

$mech->agent_alias( 'Windows IE 6');

my $cgiBase = 'https://wwws.ameritrade.com/cgi-bin/apps/';

my %page = (
        login         => 'https://wwws.ameritrade.com/apps/LogIn',
        snapQuote     => $cgiBase.'SnapQuote',
);

$mech->get($page{login});

$mech->submit_form(
        form_number => 1,
        fields    => {
                USERID    => $ARGV[0],
                PASSWORD  => $ARGV[1],
        });

print "done loginning in\n";

while(1) {
        $mech->get($page{snapQuote});
        print "page retrieval: ", $mech->success,"\n";
}

Thanks
Jay