handle multiple submit fields with same name

[petermeissner]

I had the following problem:

A form had multiple submit buttons all with the same name but different values. Because submit_form() only allows for selection of the submit by name I could not use it.

So it would be nice to be able - in addition to name

• select submit buttons by index

or to be able to

• manually control

what is used for the submit.

(originally submitted as pull request issue #146; for an real life example go here http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21.web/bt , click on Beratungsabäufe on the left side and have a look at the buttons)

[xguardi]

Any progress? This is a fairly common pattern when parsing paginated results (sometimes pagination links are different submits links with the same name but different valuers.

As in :

<form> 'formPag' (POST http://www.xxxx.xxx)
  <input hidden> 'type': 1
  <input submit> 'pag': 2
  <input submit> 'pag': 3
  <input submit> 'pag': 4

Cheers!

[xguardi]

Just in case somebody has this problem (several submit fields with the same name but different value). For example something like:

<div align="center" class="pagination-nums">
  <input type="submit" name="pag" value="1">
  <span class="pagination-act">2</span>
  <input type="submit" name="pag" value="3">
  <input type="submit" name="pag" value="4">
</div>

The way I finally solved it was by using Hadley's httr library (which rvest is build upon). It's lower level but actually very easy to use. For the case above it would be:

library(httr)
library(xml2)

# form fields 
fields <- list(
    'pag' = 2
)
# post request
r <- POST(url, 
          body = fields, 
          encode = 'form',
          user_agent('libcurl/7.43.0 r-curl/0.9.7 httr/1.2.1'))
# read as xml
r <- xml2::read_html(r)

Cheers!