Enter username in input inside of label using Mechanize in Python

Question

I am working on a project which requires a login using Mechanize in python.

It is having trouble accessing the login in the form by its name. I am not too familiar with HTML, but it appears to have something to do with the label that is referencing the login entry field.

For those who are not familiar with Mechanize, you can pretty much ignore that. Just know that br.form['xzy'] = '123' sets the field with a name of 'xyz' to '123' in whatever current form is selected. So in short the problem is finding either the correct name for the username entry field or a workaround.

This is what the python mechanize code looks like...

br.select_form(nr=0)
br.form['username'] = 'dave'
br.form['password'] = 'cats123'
session = br.submit()

This is what the input looks like in the HTML of the page I'm working on...

<label for="username" class="fl-label"><span class="accesskey">A</span>ccount:</label>
<input id="username" name="username" class="required" tabindex="1" accesskey="n" type="text" value="" size="32" autocomplete="false"/>

And here is the error I am running into...

File "vcl.py", line 12, in maristLogin
    br.form['username'] = 'steh'
mechanize._form.ControlNotFoundError: no control matching name 'username'

Sure, I put it in a pastebin here: http://pastebin.com/8jd1KjNm — Evan Cathcart, Nov 05 '13 at 02:21
Try printing the response, are you sure it's the correct page? — aIKid, Nov 05 '13 at 03:01
Yeah, just checked that. I had it print out the url, title, and raw code. All three were correct. — Evan Cathcart, Nov 05 '13 at 03:08
Those inputs are probably being added by javascript. Check for that. If that's true, [you cannot use straight Mechanize](http://stackoverflow.com/q/802225/331508). — Brock Adams, Nov 05 '13 at 04:27

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 05 '13 at 03:12

are there any other forms on the page or is the entire page on that pastebin? you could always give the following code a go to make sure you're getting the form you want.

for form in br.forms():
        if form.attrs['id'] == 'fm1':
            br.form = form

Enter username in input inside of label using Mechanize in Python

1 Answers1