# Alternative to WebUnit

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/alternative-to-webunit/126593>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [January 20, 2008, 1:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/alternative-to-webunit/126593 "2008-01-20T01:01:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![eric99](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@eric99](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric99)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2008, 1:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/alternative-to-webunit/126593/1 "2008-01-20T01:01:28Z")

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I’m writing a screen scraping application and looking for Ruby  
equivalents  
of HttpUnit or HttpClient; something that simulates a web browser and  
maintains cookies. I’ve taken a look at WebUnit, but it seems to be  
poorly  
documented and no longer maintained. Is there anything else out there I  
might have missed?  
Eric

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**Author:** ![eric99](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@eric99](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric99)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2008, 7:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/alternative-to-webunit/126593/2 "2008-01-20T07:33:12Z")

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On 2008-01-20 09:00 +0900 (Sun), Eric L. wrote:

> I’m writing a screen scraping application and looking for Ruby  
> equivalents of HttpUnit or HttpClient; something that simulates a web  
> browser and maintains cookies… Is there anything else out there I  
> might have missed?

test-httpweb. There’s a rubyforge project for it:

```
http://rubyforge.org/projects/test-httpweb/

```

but I’ve not touched that in a while, so it may be slightly stale. The  
most recent version (which is probably not all that different) is in the  
src subdir of QAM:

```
http://www.starling-software.com/en/qam.html

```

In particular, you might find the QAM server stuff helpful; everything  
you need for starting up one or more servers (web or otherwise), running  
tests against them (using test-httpweb or anything else) and then  
tearing it all down again at the end, as well as the scripts you’d use  
for starting and stopping staging and production servers, is all there.  
A quick look at the tutorial might give you an idea of what’s going on  
there, or just write me if you have questions.

cjs

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eric99](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@eric99](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric99)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2008, 11:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/alternative-to-webunit/126593/3 "2008-01-20T23:09:51Z")

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> On 2008-01-20 09:00 +0900 (Sun), Eric L. wrote:
> 
> > I’m writing a screen scraping application and looking for Ruby  
> > equivalents of HttpUnit or HttpClient; something that simulates a web  
> > browser and maintains cookies… Is there anything else out there I  
> > might have missed?

I think waitr is what you’re looking for.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eric99](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@eric99](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric99)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2008, 1:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/alternative-to-webunit/126593/4 "2008-01-23T01:25:51Z")

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Actually I did a bit of research and found WWW::Mechanize (thought it  
was  
for Perl only) and scRUBYt, which served my needs quite well. But  
thanks  
for the need anyways, I’ll look into them!