Question

I am using WWW::Scripter to grab a page written with javascript/ajax, the “link” to the next page is a div tag, I can get the tag but cannot seem to figure out a way to click on it to get to the next page.. Any suggestions?

my $w = new WWW::Scripter;
$w->use_plugin('Ajax'); 
$w->get($c->website);

my $loop = 1;
my $page = 1;

while ($loop) {
  my $te = HTML::TableExtract->new();
  $content = $w->content();

  $te->parse($content);
  $table = $te->first_table_found;
  $str .= Dumper $table;
  $page += 1;

  $loop = $self->next_page($w);
}

sub next_page {
my $self = shift;
my $w = shift;
$div = $w->document->getElementById('example_next');
if (defined $div) {
--I want to click on the div and move to the next page, suggestions?---
return 1;
} else {
return 0;
}
}

example html code… First there is a table holding the data…

 <table class="display" id="example">
<thead>
    headers
</thead>
<tbody>---DATA---</tbody>
 </table>

Then pagination to go from “page” to “page” the data is rewritten with each pagination click..

<div class="dataTables_paginate paging_two_button" id="example_paginate">
<div class="paginate_disabled_previous" title="Previous" id="example_previous"></div>
<div class="paginate_enabled_next" title="Next" id="example_next"></div>
</div>

This is all using http://www.datatables.net

Answer 1

You need to identify the JavaScript call that occurs when that div’s id is clicked, and then execute it. Alternatively you could use WWW::Mechanize::Firefox or WWW::Selenium.