Click on a javascript link within python?

Question

I am navigating a site using python's mechanize module and having trouble clicking on a javascript link for next page. I did a bit of reading and people suggested I need python-spidermonkey and DOMforms. I managed to get them installed by I am not sure of the syntax to actually click on the link.

I can identify the code on the page as:

<a href="javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$MainContent$gvSearchResults','Page$2')">2</a>

Does anyone know how to click on it? or if perhaps there's another tool.

Thanks

Answer 1

I mainly use HtmlUnit under jython for these use cases. Also I published a simple article on the subject: Web Scraping Ajax and Javascript sites.

Answer 2

instead of struggling with python-spidermonkey try webkit's qt python bindings.

Here is a full example to execute JavaScript and extract the final HTML.

Answer 3

how about calling __doPostBack('ctl00$MainContent$gvSearchResults','Page$'+pageid); (javascript method, via python-spidermonkey)