282 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
282 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
=head1 NAME
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lwpcook - libwww-perl cookbook
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=head1 DESCRIPTION
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This document contain some examples that show typical usage of the
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libwww-perl library. You should consult the documentation for the
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individual modules for more detail.
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All examples should be runnable programs. You can, in most cases, test
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the code sections by piping the program text directly to perl.
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=head1 GET
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It is very easy to use this library to just fetch documents from the
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net. The LWP::Simple module provides the get() function that return
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the document specified by its URL argument:
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use LWP::Simple;
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$doc = get 'http://www.sn.no/libwww-perl/';
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or, as a perl one-liner using the getprint() function:
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perl -MLWP::Simple -e 'getprint "http://www.sn.no/libwww-perl/"'
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or, how about fetching the latest perl by running this command:
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perl -MLWP::Simple -e '
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getstore "ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz",
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"perl.tar.gz"'
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You will probably first want to find a CPAN site closer to you by
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running something like the following command:
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perl -MLWP::Simple -e 'getprint "http://www.perl.com/perl/CPAN/CPAN.html"'
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Enough of this simple stuff! The LWP object oriented interface gives
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you more control over the request sent to the server. Using this
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interface you have full control over headers sent and how you want to
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handle the response returned.
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua->agent("$0/0.1 " . $ua->agent);
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# $ua->agent("Mozilla/8.0") # pretend we are very capable browser
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$req = new HTTP::Request 'GET' => 'http://www.sn.no/libwww-perl';
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$req->header('Accept' => 'text/html');
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# send request
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$res = $ua->request($req);
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# check the outcome
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if ($res->is_success) {
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print $res->content;
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} else {
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print "Error: " . $res->status_line . "\n";
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}
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The lwp-request program (alias GET) that is distributed with the
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library can also be used to fetch documents from WWW servers.
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=head1 HEAD
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If you just want to check if a document is present (i.e. the URL is
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valid) try to run code that looks like this:
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use LWP::Simple;
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if (head($url)) {
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# ok document exists
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}
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The head() function really returns a list of meta-information about
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the document. The first three values of the list returned are the
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document type, the size of the document, and the age of the document.
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More control over the request or access to all header values returned
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require that you use the object oriented interface described for GET
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above. Just s/GET/HEAD/g.
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=head1 POST
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There is no simple procedural interface for posting data to a WWW server. You
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must use the object oriented interface for this. The most common POST
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operation is to access a WWW form application:
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
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my $req = new HTTP::Request 'POST','http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/BugGlimpse';
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$req->content_type('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
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$req->content('match=www&errors=0');
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my $res = $ua->request($req);
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print $res->as_string;
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Lazy people use the HTTP::Request::Common module to set up a suitable
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POST request message (it handles all the escaping issues) and has a
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suitable default for the content_type:
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use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
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my $req = POST 'http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/BugGlimpse',
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[ search => 'www', errors => 0 ];
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print $ua->request($req)->as_string;
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The lwp-request program (alias POST) that is distributed with the
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library can also be used for posting data.
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=head1 PROXIES
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Some sites use proxies to go through fire wall machines, or just as
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cache in order to improve performance. Proxies can also be used for
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accessing resources through protocols not supported directly (or
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supported badly :-) by the libwww-perl library.
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You should initialize your proxy setting before you start sending
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requests:
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua->env_proxy; # initialize from environment variables
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# or
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$ua->proxy(ftp => 'http://proxy.myorg.com');
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$ua->proxy(wais => 'http://proxy.myorg.com');
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$ua->no_proxy(qw(no se fi));
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my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'wais://xxx.com/');
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print $ua->request($req)->as_string;
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The LWP::Simple interface will call env_proxy() for you automatically.
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Applications that use the $ua->env_proxy() method will normally not
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use the $ua->proxy() and $ua->no_proxy() methods.
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Some proxies also require that you send it a username/password in
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order to let requests through. You should be able to add the
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required header, with something like this:
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua->proxy(['http', 'ftp'] => 'http://proxy.myorg.com');
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$req = new HTTP::Request 'GET',"http://www.perl.com";
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$req->proxy_authorization_basic("proxy_user", "proxy_password");
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$res = $ua->request($req);
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print $res->content if $res->is_success;
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Replace C<proxy.myorg.com>, C<proxy_user> and
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C<proxy_password> with something suitable for your site.
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=head1 ACCESS TO PROTECTED DOCUMENTS
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Documents protected by basic authorization can easily be accessed
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like this:
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
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$req = new HTTP::Request GET => 'http://www.sn.no/secret/';
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$req->authorization_basic('aas', 'mypassword');
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print $ua->request($req)->as_string;
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The other alternative is to provide a subclass of I<LWP::UserAgent> that
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overrides the get_basic_credentials() method. Study the I<lwp-request>
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program for an example of this.
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=head1 HTTPS
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URLs with https scheme are accessed in exactly the same way as with
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http scheme, provided that an SSL interface module for LWP has been
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properly installed (see the F<README.SSL> file found in the
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libwww-perl distribution for more details). If no SSL interface is
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installed for LWP to use, then you will get "501 Protocol scheme
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'https' is not supported" errors when accessing such URLs.
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Here's an example of fetching and printing a WWW page using SSL:
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
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my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'https://www.helsinki.fi/');
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my $res = $ua->request($req);
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if ($res->is_success) {
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print $res->as_string;
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} else {
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print "Failed: ", $res->status_line, "\n";
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}
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=head1 MIRRORING
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If you want to mirror documents from a WWW server, then try to run
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code similar to this at regular intervals:
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use LWP::Simple;
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%mirrors = (
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'http://www.sn.no/' => 'sn.html',
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'http://www.perl.com/' => 'perl.html',
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'http://www.sn.no/libwww-perl/' => 'lwp.html',
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'gopher://gopher.sn.no/' => 'gopher.html',
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);
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while (($url, $localfile) = each(%mirrors)) {
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mirror($url, $localfile);
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}
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Or, as a perl one-liner:
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perl -MLWP::Simple -e 'mirror("http://www.perl.com/", "perl.html")';
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The document will not be transfered unless it has been updated.
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=head1 LARGE DOCUMENTS
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If the document you want to fetch is too large to be kept in memory,
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then you have two alternatives. You can instruct the library to write
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the document content to a file (second $ua->request() argument is a file
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name):
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
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my $req = new HTTP::Request 'GET',
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'http://www.sn.no/~aas/perl/www/libwww-perl-5.00.tar.gz';
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$res = $ua->request($req, "libwww-perl.tar.gz");
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if ($res->is_success) {
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print "ok\n";
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}
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Or you can process the document as it arrives (second $ua->request()
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argument is a code reference):
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use LWP::UserAgent;
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$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
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$URL = 'ftp://ftp.unit.no/pub/rfc/rfc-index.txt';
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my $expected_length;
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my $bytes_received = 0;
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$ua->request(HTTP::Request->new('GET', $URL),
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sub {
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my($chunk, $res) = @_;
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$bytes_received += length($chunk);
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unless (defined $expected_length) {
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$expected_length = $res->content_length || 0;
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}
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if ($expected_length) {
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printf STDERR "%d%% - ",
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100 * $bytes_received / $expected_length;
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}
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print STDERR "$bytes_received bytes received\n";
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# XXX Should really do something with the chunk itself
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# print $chunk;
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});
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=head1 COPYRIGHT
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Copyright 1996-1999, Gisle Aas
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This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
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modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
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