Reading HTML Forms¶

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A friend of mine recently asked, “Is there anything in Python that can read forms?

He’s got perl code that looks like this:

        my $form = HTML::Form->parse($writeFormPage, $res->base());
        defined($form) or return "Can't even get wiki edit form at $URL";
    if ($form->find_input('savetext')) {
        $form->value('savetext',$pagetext);
    }
        my $req = $form->click('button_save');
        my $res = $ua->request($req);

I thought, “cgi module,” but realized it’s for writing pages, not reading them. Then I thought urllib, but didn’t see anything very promising over there, either.

Does anyone know of Python code or a Python module that will help you read out forms, and create responses to them?

– StefanBehnel

lxml.html has pretty sophisticated HTML form support.

– LionKimbro 2004-06-03 07:39:12

Look at:

Mechanize: http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/ (which is based on a Perl module)
Webunit: http://www.mechanicalcat.net/tech/webunit/

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Reading HTML Forms¶