From: Aaron Patterson <aaron_patterson@...>
Date: 2006-08-06T03:56:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Mechanize

On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 04:20:09PM +0900, barjunk wrote:
> Gregory Brown wrote:
> > On 8/4/06, barjunk <barjunk@attglobal.net> wrote:
> > >
> [snip]
> 
> > Not a reference, but here is some code from my freshmeat automation
> > that deals with select lists in a form field
> >
> > s = form.field("add_release[release_focus_name]")

The variable "s" is a SelectList class which represents a "select" html
tag.

> > s.value = s.options[5].value

A SelectList class has many Options associated with it.  An Option
represents an "option" tag.  Here Gregory is picking one of the options
and setting it as the value for this select list.

> >
> > t = form.field("add_release[hide_from_frontpage]")
> > t.value = t.options[0].value
> 
> what do add_release[release_focus_name] and the add_release etc...stand
> for?

"add_release[release_focus_name]" is the name of the select field.
Gregory is probably dealing HTML that looks something like this:

<select name="add_release[release_focus_name]">
  <option value="1">Option 1</option>
  <option value="2">Option 2</option>
  <option value="3">Option 3</option>
  <option value="4">Option 4</option>
  <option value="5">Option 5</option>
  <option value="6">Option 6</option>
</select>

If you wanted to look at the text for each option, your code might look
something like this (using the variables Gregory had):

s.options.each { |o| puts "Text: '#{o.text}' Value: '#{o.value}'" }

Make sure to check out the RDoc for WWW::Mechanize::SelectList and
WWW::Mechanize::Option at http://mechanize.rubyforge.org/

I hope this helps!

--Aaron