I'm having problems with a <SELECT MULTIPLE> element in a form, and this seems
like it is not just Mech, but a problem with HTTP::Form as well. In short,
this item is a <SELECT MULTIPLE> object and when I first tried to set a
value, I got error messages, so I changed my code to retreive the object and
print out the possible values and the value names. It did not print out the
values available in the code, so I changed my code to retreive an array of
objects and found that this one <SELECT MULTIPLE> object was being treated as
a number of OPTION objects. The HTML was not complete (the </OPTION> tags
were missing), so I got the page, fixed it with a few regexes, then replaced
the HTML, and that didn't fix the problem. After experimenting, I found that
once I removed the MULTIPLE keyword from the <SELECT> tag, the item was then
seen as one object, and I could use it as expected. I need to know if I'm
doing something wrong, or why a <SELECT MULTIPLE> is not treated as one
<SELECT> object, if this is a bug I need to report, or, if not, how I can
select ONE value in a <SELECT MULTIPLE> object. I've included much more
below.
Here's the code for the form object I'm dealing with (the form itself is okay,
it seems to be this and a few other <SELECT MULTIPLE> objects that are the
problem:
<SELECT NAME=location MULTIPLE>
<OPTION SELECTED>
<OPTION Value='1' >East End
<OPTION Value='2' >West End
<OPTION Value='3' >Southside
<OPTION Value='4' >Northside
</SELECT>
When I cleaned it up, it was like this:
<SELECT NAME=location MULTIPLE>
<OPTION SELECTED Value = ''> </OPTION>
<OPTION Value='1' >East End</OPTION>
<OPTION Value='2' >West End</OPTION>
<OPTION Value='3' >Southside</OPTION>
<OPTION Value='4' >Northside</OPTION>
</SELECT>
This did not make a difference. The only thing that did make a difference was
when I removed "MULTIPLE". I changed my code to set the <SELECT> value to
get the OPTION object(s), step through each one, and list the possible values
and value names. Here's the subroutine I used:
sub setselectname {
my ($form, $option, $name, $val, @obj, @val);
($name, $val) = @_;
if (!checkformelement($name, "option")) {return 0;}
$form = $mech->current_form();
@opt = $form->find_input($name, "option");
print "--------------------------------------------------------\n";
print "Option name: $name, Count found: $#opt\n";
foreach (@opt) {
print "Option:\n";
@val = $_->possible_values();
foreach (@val) {
print "\tValue: $_\n";
}
@val = $_->value_names();
foreach (@val) {
print "\tName: $_\n";
}
}
return 1;
}
Originally, to set the <SELECT> objects value I used:
$mech->select($name, $val);
And once I realized the problem was with the MULTIPLE keyword, I tried:
$mech->select($name, [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Just in case it needed an array (only the first array element was set).
And here's the code it outputs if the MULTIPLE keyword is left in:
--------------------------------------------------------
Option name: locatoin, Count found: 4
Option:
Value:
Value:
Name: off
Name:
Option:
Value:
Value: 1
Name: off
Name: East End
Option:
Value:
Value: 2
Name: off
Name: West End
Option:
Value:
Value: 3
Name: off
Name: Southside
Option:
Value:
Value: 4
Name: off
Name: Northside
And here's the code it outputs if the MULTIPLE keyword is left out:
--------------------------------------------------------
Option name: location Count found: 0
Option:
Value:
Value: 1
Value: 2
Value: 3
Value: 4
Name:
Name: East End
Name: West End
Name: Southside
Name: Northside
So if the MULTIPLE keyword is in, it sees each <OPTION> as a separate item. I
can understand that, but there is no way for me to access the entire
<SELECT>...</SELECT> object as one form element so I can set the value of the
<SELECT> object to one of the <OPTION> items. Am I doing something wrong?
I'm under a deadline and everything was going great (I even thought I'd
actually get a weekend off!) until this came up. I need to resolve it, so
any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Hal
