20.2.1. Problem

20.2.2. Solution

use LWP::Simple;
use URI::URL;

$url = url("http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books");
$url->query_form("field-author" => "Larry Wall"); # more params if needed
$page = get($url);

use LWP::UserAgent;

$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new( );
$resp = $ua->post("www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form",
                  { "url"            => "index-books",
                    "field-keywords" => "perl" });
$content = $resp->content;

20.2.3. Discussion

The format of a query string is:

field1=value1&field2=value2&field3=value3

In GET requests, this is encoded in the URL being requested:

script.cgi?field1=value1&field2=value2&field3=value3

Fields must still be properly escaped, so setting the arg form parameter to "this isn't <EASY> & <FUN>" would yield:

http://www.site.com/path/to/
        script.cgi?arg=%22this+isn%27t+%3CEASY%3E+%26+%3CFUN%3E%22

You can use the LWP::Simple module to submit data in a GET request, but there is no corresponding LWP::Simple interface for POST requests. Instead, the $ua->post method creates and submits the request in one fell swoop.

If you need to go through a proxy, construct your user agent and tell it to use a proxy this way:

$ua->proxy('http' => 'http://proxy.myorg.com:8081');

If a proxy handles multiple protocols, pass an array reference as the first argument:

$ua->proxy(['http', 'ftp'] => 'http://proxy.myorg.com:8081');

20.2.4. See Also