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mechanize 2.1

drbrain | Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:14:27 GMT

Posted in Software

mechanize version 2.1 has been released!

• mechanize.rubyforge.org

• github.com/tenderlove/mechanize/tree/master

The Mechanize library is used for automating interaction with websites. Mechanize automatically stores and sends cookies, follows redirects, can follow links, and submit forms. Form fields can be populated and submitted. Mechanize also keeps track of the sites that you have visited as a history.

2.1 / 2011-12-20

• Deprecations

  • Mechanize#get no longer accepts an options hash.

  • Mechanize::Util::to_native_charset has been removed.

• Minor enhancements

  • Mechanize now depends on net-http-persistent 2.3+. This new version brings idle timeouts to help with the dreaded “too many connection resets” issue when POSTing to a closed connection. Issue #123

  • SSL connections will be verified against the system certificate store by default.

  • Added Mechanize#retry_change_requests to allow mechanize to retry POST and other non-idempotent requests when you know it is safe to do so. Issue #123

  • Mechanize can now stream files directly to disk without loading them into memory first through Mechanize::Download, a pluggable parser for downloading files.

    All responses larger than Mechanize#max_file_buffer are downloaded to a Tempfile. For backwards compatibility Mechanize::File subclasses still load the response body into memory.

    To force all unknown content types to download to disk instead of memory set:

    agent.pluggable_parser.default = Mechanize::Download

  • Added Mechanize#content_encoding_hooks which allow handling of non-standard content encodings like “agzip”. Patch #125 by kitamomonga

  • Added dom_class to elements and the element matcher like dom_id. Patch #156 by Dan Hansen.

  • Added support for the HTML5 keygen form element. See dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-keygen-element Patch #157 by Victor Costan.

  • Mechanize no longer follows meta refreshes that have no “url=” in the content attribute to avoid infinite loops. To follow a meta refresh to the same page set Mechanize#follow_meta_refresh_self to true. Issue #134 by Jo Hund.

  • Updated ‘Mac Safari’ User-Agent alias to Safari 5.1.1. ‘Mac Safari 4’ can be used for the old ‘Mac Safari’ alias.

  • When given multiple HTTP authentication options mechanize now picks the strongest method.

  • Improvements to HTTP authorization:

    • mechanize raises Mechanize::UnathorizedError for 401 responses which is a sublcass of Mechanize::ResponseCodeError.

    • Added support for NTLM authentication, but this has not been tested.

  • Mechanize::Cookie.new accepts attributes in a hash.

  • Mechanize::CookieJar#<<(cookie) (alias: add!) is added. Issue #139

  • Different mechanize instances may now have different loggers. Issue #122

  • Mechanize now accepts a proxy port as a service name or number string. Issue #167

• Bug fixes

  • Mechanize now handles cookies just as most modern browsers do, roughly based on RFC 6265.

    • domain=.example.com (which is invalid) is considered identical to domain=example.com.

    • A cookie with domain=example.com is sent to host.sub.example.com as well as host.example.com and example.com.

    • A cookie with domain=TLD (no dots) is accepted and sent if the host name is TLD, and rejected otherwise. To retain compatibility and convention, host/domain names starting with “local” are exempt from this rule.

    • A cookie with no domain attribute is only sent to the original host.

    • A cookie with an Effective TLD is rejected based on the public suffix list. (cf. publicsuffix.org/)

    • “Secure” cookies are not sent via non-https connection.

    • Subdomain match is not performed against an IP address.

    • It is recommended that you clear out existing cookie jars for regeneration because previously saved cookies may not have been parsed correctly.

  • Mechanize takes more care to avoid saving files with certain unsafe names. You should still take care not to use mechanize to save files directly into your home directory ($HOME). Issue #163.

  • Mechanize#cookie_jar= works again. Issue #126

  • The original Referer value persists on redirection. Issue #150

  • Do not send a referer on a Refresh header based redirection.

  • Fixed encoding error in tests when LANG=C. Patch #142 by jinschoi.

  • The order of items in a form submission now match the DOM order. Patch #129 by kitamomonga

  • Fixed proxy example in EXAMPLE. Issue #146 by NielsKSchjoedt

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