Mechanize difference between br.click_link() and br.follow_link()

Question

I am using mechanize to automate some form submissions.

To do that I require to go to the home page of some website, click on a link with a particular text which redirects me to an another page and fill in the form in the new page.

I tried using

  response = br.follow_link(text_regex="sometext")

  for f in response.forms()
      print f.name

The error Message I got was AttributeError: closeable_response instance has no attribute 'forms'

When I tried

for f in br.forms()
    print f.name

It prints the name of forms in the hompage and not the new page I redirect to .

How can find the name of the forms in the new page ?

What does 'response' contain ?

And what is the difference between click_link() and follow_link() . The mechnanize doc doesn't explain this clearly.

Thanks

Answer 1

for the difference between click_link() and follow_link():

both methods take the same keywords as parameters.

• click_link() is a method which will return a Request object, which then can be used for creating a request:

  req = br.click_link(text='Sample Text')
  br.open(req)
  

• follow_link() will perform the same action as .open(), directly opening the link.

This information has been taken from the following documentation: http://joesourcecode.com/Documentation/mechanize0.2.5/mechanize._mechanize.Browser-class.html#click_link

Follow_link() behaviour can be observed in the examples given at wwwsearch: http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/