From: Aaron Patterson <aaron_patterson@...>
Date: 2006-08-06T06:47:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Mechanize

On Sun, Aug 06, 2006 at 06:05:04AM +0900, barjunk wrote:
[snip]
> 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.

Agreed.  This is not very intuitive, which is something I believe I've
fixed in 0.5.2 (which isn't released yet).  In 0.5.2 you'll be able to
say:

  selectlist.options.first.click
or 
  selectlist.options.first.select

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

Check out the EXAMPLES file.  I've also tried to put examples in many
classes, though I will add more for the next release.  I've also got a
few one liners in my blog:

http://tenderlovemaking.com/2006/05/26/mechanize-one-liners/

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

Forms are just stored as an array on the Page object returned to you by
mechanize.  You can treat them like an array, or better yet use the name
of the form to find the right one to deal with.

To find the first form, you could do either of these:

  page.forms.first
  page.forms[0]

To find a form with the name "foo", you can do either of these:

  page.forms.with.name('foo').first
  page.forms.name('foo').first

Take a look at the "Google" example in the RDoc example page.  The
EXAMPLES Rdoc, and the NOTES Rdoc should be pretty helpful.

--Aaron