Perl how to parse HTTP response content

Question

I have a Perl script that does a post to a website to add a customer for billing purposes. That parts works great and I am able to test for errors/success. Now I need to parse the content that is returned.

use strict;
use warnings;

use LWP::UserAgent;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $res = $ua->post('https://testserver', [
    'UMkey' => "test key",
    'UMname' => "Example Tester",
    'UMcard' => "4000100011112224",
    'UMexpir' => "0919",
    'UMcvv2' => "123",
    'UMamount' => "5.50",
    'UMinvoice' => "123456",
    'UMstreet' => "1234 Main Street",
    'UMzip' => "12345",
    'UMcommand' => 'cc:sale',
    'UMaddcustomer' => 'yes',
    'UMbillcompany' => 'ed',
    'UMbillfname' => 'Tester',
    'UMbilllname' => 'Tofu',
]);

print "\n\nresult: ".$res->content;
print "\n";

result -

result: UMversion=2.9&UMstatus=Approved&UMauthCode=006444&UMrefNum=100020848&UMa
vsResult=Address%3A%20Match%20%26%205%20Digit%20Zip%3A%20Match&UMavsResultCode=Y
YY&UMcvv2Result=Match&UMcvv2ResultCode=M&UMresult=A&UMvpasResultCode=&UMerror=Ap
proved&UMerrorcode=00000&UMcustnum=50405&UMbatch=309&UMbatchRefNum=1640&UMisDupl
icate=N&UMconvertedAmount=&UMconvertedAmountCurrency=840&UMconversionRate=&UMcus
tReceiptResult=No%20Receipt%20Sent&UMprocRefNum=&UMcardLevelResult=A&UMauthAmoun
t=5.5&UMfiller=filled

I need to parse the result and return just specific fields, but I am not sure how to do that. Or is there a way that I can just pull ok specific value pairs from the content?

Answer 1

Assuming the line breaks in the output you posted were added by you rather than being in the returned string, the response's content appears to be in the application/x-www-form-urlencoded format.

You could (mis-)use URI to parse it.

use URI qw( );

my %response_data = URI->new("?".$response->content(), "http")->query_form();

The last hackish solution involves URI::Escape 's uri_unescape .

use URI::Escape qw( uri_unescape );

my %response_data = map { uri_unescape($_) } split(/[&=]/, $response->content());