# Seeking some guidance with net/http **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [April 4, 2008, 2:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828 "2008-04-04T02:48:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aginghipster)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 2:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828/1 "2008-04-04T02:48:59Z")
Heya, I am attempting to write a script that lets me login to my Youtube account to gather frequent data for the videos I have uploaded, I am stumbling over the Youtube login procedure which seems to involve both cookies and session info. I am able to get this login procedure to work with Perl and LWP::UserAgent but so far using net/http and Ruby I am failing. Here is the code I have been playing with which involves first a POST form submission to youtube’s /login script, then the code to follow the redirection back to the /index page – but looking at the contents returned from /index it appears youtube doesn’t recognize me as being logged in: * * * # Note: I have added a bunch of puts statements to help debug, leaving them here for this post require ‘net/http’ http = Net::HTTP.new( ‘[www.youtube.com](http://www.youtube.com)’, 80 ) path = ‘/login’ agent = ‘Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1’ data = ‘nexturl=/¤t\_form=loginForm&action\_login=Log+In&username=MY\_USER&password=MY\_PWD’ headers = { ‘Referer’ =\> ‘[http://www.youtube.com/](http://www.youtube.com/)’, ‘Content-Type’ =\> ‘application/x-www-form-urlencoded’, ‘User-Agent’ =\> agent } resp, data = http.post( path, data, headers ) cookie = resp.response[‘set-cookie’] if ( resp.code =~ /^3/ ) puts "Got Redirect: " + resp[‘location’] end next\_loc = resp[‘location’] puts ‘Logging In to Set Cookies:’ puts ‘Code=’ + resp.code puts ‘Mesg=’ + resp.message puts ‘Cookie=’ + cookie puts ‘Next Location=’ + next\_loc puts ‘Data=’ + data headers = { ‘Cookie’ =\> cookie, ‘User-Agent’ =\> agent } resp, data = http.get( next\_loc, headers ) puts ‘(should be) Logged In:’ puts ‘Code=’ + resp.code puts ‘Mesg=’ + resp.message puts ‘Data=’ + data * * * I am unsure what part I am missing which youtube apparently needs to complete its login procedure, I would greatly appreciate any helpful suggestions! Thanks, Andy ---
**Author:** ![aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aginghipster)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 2:54am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828/2 "2008-04-04T02:54:16Z")
You may want to check out: [http://youtube-g.rubyforge.org/](http://youtube-g.rubyforge.org/) at least see how they manage the authentication aspect. /Shawn ---
**Author:** ![aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aginghipster)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 2:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828/3 "2008-04-04T02:57:11Z")
Try this: [http://rubyforge.org/projects/youtube](http://rubyforge.org/projects/youtube) ---
**Author:** ![aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aginghipster)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828/4 "2008-04-04T03:06:34Z")
Hiya Shawn, I did have a look at youtube-g, have the README file open as I type this in fact but I don’t see anything related to authenticating an actual Youtube account, the lib is more for accessing the functions that Youtube makes available with just guest access as far as I can tell… ☹ -Andy ---
**Author:** ![aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aginghipster)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828/5 "2008-04-04T03:29:28Z")
Dan D. wrote: > Try this: [http://rubyforge.org/projects/youtube](http://rubyforge.org/projects/youtube) Dan, like the youtube-g lib this one also provides no means for authenticating a Youtube account. Though this does provide some interesting options that can help me in some respects, it doesn’t provide me with the same functionality that I can have as if I were actually logged into the website, which I am trying to emulate. Thanks -Andy ---
**Author:** ![aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aginghipster)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:54am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828/6 "2008-04-04T03:54:08Z")
This worked for me: require ‘rubygems’ require ‘mechanize’ user = “user\_here” pw = “password\_here” agent = WWW::Mechanize.new page = agent.post ‘[YouTube](http://youtube.com/signup)’, {“username”=\>user,“password”=\>pw,“current\_form”=\>“loginForm”,“action\_login”=\>“Log+In”} page = agent.get ‘[http://youtube.com/](http://youtube.com/)’ # this returns true, showing you are logged in p page.body.to\_s.include?(“/user/#{user}”) ---
**Author:** ![aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aginghipster)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 4:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828/7 "2008-04-04T04:21:40Z")
Shawn, I had not heard of the mechanize lib, but sure enough it works great. Thank you for posting that, much appreciated! Thanks -Andy ---
**Author:** ![aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@aginghipster](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aginghipster)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 5:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seeking-some-guidance-with-net-http/133828/8 "2008-04-04T05:59:20Z")
Andrew C. wrote: > Shawn, I had not heard of the mechanize lib, but sure enough it works > great. Thank you for posting that, much appreciated! > > Thanks > -Andy perl has mechanize too.