Perl Mechanize Firefox click button (not in HTML form)

Question

Please consider the following code:

I need help clicking the button Quarterly on the web page.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize::Firefox;

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize::Firefox->
    new
        (
            create      => 1,
            activate    => 1,
            launch      => 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe',
        );

my $url = 'http://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL';

$mech->get($url);

for (1..15)
{
    last if $mech->xpath('//[@class="Fl(end)"]', all => 1);
    sleep(1);
}

$mech->click_button(value => 'Quarterly');

The button is located:

<div class="Fl(end)" data-reactid="319">
    <button class="P(0px) M(0px) C($actionBlue) Bd(0px) O(n)">
        <div class="Fz(s) Fw(500) D(ib) Pend(15px) H(18px) C($finDarkLink):h Mend(15px) BdEnd Bdc($subTabNavGray) C($actionBlue)">
            <span>Annual</span>
        </div>
    </button>
    <div class="Fz(s) Fw(500) D(ib) Pend(15px) H(18px) C($finDarkLink):h Mend(15px) C($finDarkLink)">
        <span>Quarterly</span>
    </div>
</div>

The page initially loads Annual data, but I'm interested in the Quarterly data.

After the Quarterly data is loaded, I'm interested in capturing the content inside the table <div class="Mt(10px)"><table class="Lh(1.7) W(100%) M(0)"><tbody><tr class="Bdbw(1px) Bdbc($lightGray) Bdbs(s) H(36px)"><td class="Fw(b) Fz(15px)"> for fundamental analysis.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 13 '17 at 10:46

You cannot use click_button to click something that's not in a form. Instead, you need to use click. To get the right button, we can use an xpath expression.

$mech->click({ xpath => '//button[.//span[text()="Quarterly"]]' });

The expression looks complicated, but is not so bad.

//button[.//span[text()="Quarterly"]]
//button                              # the button element anywhere in the page
        [                           ] # that contains
         .                            # relative to it's position
          //span                      # a span element
                [                  ]  # that contains
                 text()=              # a text node
                        "Quarterly"   # with the exact string "Quarterly"

It will give you exactly that one button, and click will click it.

(Please note that I have only tested the xpath expression, not the actual Perl code).

Perl Mechanize Firefox click button (not in HTML form)

1 Answers1