From: barjunk <barjunk@...>
Date: 2006-08-06T06:05:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Mechanize


Aaron Patterson wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 04:20:09PM +0900, barjunk wrote:
[snip]
> > > 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/

Aaron, this helps tremendously!  It would be awesome if these kind of
examples were in the api docs mentioned above.  As it stands, the
example :

selectlist.value = selectlist.options.first.value

gives no context whatsoever and being new to both ruby and web
programming, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage.

Maybe a hint about how to go through the API to get the answer for
myself? :)

One additional question I have is, what if there is more than one form
on the page?

Mechanize is awesome stuff, and I have already leveraged it to some
degree.  Thanks for the additional help.

Mike B.