POST followed by GET
I'm trying to figure out how to do a POST followed by a GET. If I do something like: wget http://www.somesite.com/post.cgi --post-data 'a=1&b=2' http://www.somesite.com/getme.html -d I get the following behavior: POST /post.cgi HTTP/1.0 [POST data: a=1&b=2] POST /getme.html HTTP/1.0 [POST data: a=1&b=2] Is this what is expected? Is there a way I can coax wget to POST to post.cgi and GET getme.html? Tony
Re: POST followed by GET
"Tony Lewis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I'm trying to figure out how to do a POST followed by a GET. > > If I do something like: > > wget http://www.somesite.com/post.cgi --post-data 'a=1&b=2' > http://www.somesite.com/getme.html -d Well... `--post-data' currently affects all the URLs in the Wget run. I'm not sure if that makes sense... perhaps it should only apply to the first one. But I'm not sure that makes sense either -- what if I *want* to POST the same data to two URLs, much like you want to POST to one and GET to the other? Maybe the right thing would be for `--post-data' to only apply to the URL it precedes, as in: wget --post-data=foo URL1 --post-data=bar URL2 URL3 In that case, URL1 would be POSTed with foo, URL2 with bar, and URL3 would be fetched with GET. But I'm not at all sure that it's even possible to do this and keep using getopt! What do the others think?
Re: POST followed by GET
Hrvoje Niksic wrote: > Maybe the right thing would be for `--post-data' to only apply to the > URL it precedes, as in: > > wget --post-data=foo URL1 --post-data=bar URL2 URL3 > > But I'm not at all sure that it's even possible to do this and keep > using getopt! I'll start by saying that I don't know enough about getopt to comment on whether Hrvoje's suggestion will work. It's hard to imagine a situation where wget's current behavior makes sense over multiple URLs. I'm sure someone can come up with an example, but it's likely to be an unusual case. I see the ability to POST a form as being most useful when a site requires some kind of form-based authentication to proceed with looking at other pages within the site. Some alternatives that occur to me follow. Alternative #1. Only apply --post-data to the first URL on the command line. (A simple solution that probably covers the majority of cases.) Alternative #2. Allow POST and GET as keywords in the URL list so that: wget POST http://www.somesite.com/post.cgi --post-data 'a=1&b=2' GET http://www.somesite.com/getme.html would explicitly specify which URL uses POST and which uses GET. If more than one POST is specified, all use the same --post-data. Alternative #3. Look for tags and have --post-file specify the data to be specified to various forms: --form-action=URL1 'a=1&b=2' --form-action=URL2 'foo=bar' Alternative #4. Allow complex sessions to be defined using a "session" file such as: wget --session=somefile --user-agent='my robot' Options specified on the command line apply to every URL. If somefile contained: --post-data 'data=foo' POST URL1 --post-data 'data=bar' POST URL2 --referer=URL3 GET URL4 It would be the same logically equivalent to the following three commands: wget --user-agent='my robot' --post-data 'data=foo' POST URL1 wget --user-agent='my robot' --post-data 'data=bar' POST URL2 wget --user-agent='my robot' --referer=URL3 GET URL4 with wget's state maintained across the session. Tony
Re: POST followed by GET
On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Tony Lewis wrote: > It would be the same logically equivalent to the following three commands: > > wget --user-agent='my robot' --post-data 'data=foo' POST URL1 > wget --user-agent='my robot' --post-data 'data=bar' POST URL2 > wget --user-agent='my robot' --referer=URL3 GET URL4 Just as a comparison, this approach is basicly what we've went with in curl (curl has supported this kind of operations for years, including support for multipart formposts which I guess is next up for adding to wget! ;-P). There are just too many options or specifics that you can set, so having them all possible to change between several URLs specified on the command line makes the command line parser complicated and the command lines even more complex. The main thing this described approach requires (that I can think of) is that wget would need to store session cookies as well in the cookie file (I believe I read that it doesn't atm). -- -=- Daniel Stenberg -=- http://daniel.haxx.se -=- ech`echo xiun|tr nu oc|sed 'sx\([sx]\)\([xoi]\)xo un\2\1 is xg'`ol
Re: POST followed by GET
I like these suggestions. How about the following: for 1.9, document that `--post-data' expects one URL and that its behavior for multiple specified URLs might change in a future version. Then, for 1.10 we can implement one of the alternative behaviors.
Re: POST followed by GET
Hrvoje Niksic wrote: > I like these suggestions. How about the following: for 1.9, document > that `--post-data' expects one URL and that its behavior for multiple > specified URLs might change in a future version. > > Then, for 1.10 we can implement one of the alternative behaviors. That works for me... I can hardly wait for 1.9 to get wrapped up so we can start working on 1.10. Hrvoje, has anyone mentioned how glad we are that you've come back? Tony
