Using a Ruby script to login to a website via https
Mechanize
Mechanize is ruby library which imititates the behaviour of a web browser. You can click links, fill out forms und submit them. It even has a history and remebers cookies. It seems your problem could be easily solved with the help of mechanize.
The following example is taken from http://docs.seattlerb.org/mechanize/EXAMPLES_rdoc.html:
require 'rubygems'require 'mechanize'a = Mechanize.newa.get('http://rubyforge.org/') do |page| # Click the login link login_page = a.click(page.link_with(:text => /Log In/)) # Submit the login form my_page = login_page.form_with(:action => '/account/login.php') do |f| f.form_loginname = ARGV[0] f.form_pw = ARGV[1] end.click_button my_page.links.each do |link| text = link.text.strip next unless text.length > 0 puts text endend
For what it's worth, you could check out Webrat. It is meant to be used a tool for automated acceptance tests, but I think you could use it to simulate filling out the login fields, then click through links by their names, and grab the needed HTML as a string. Haven't tried doing anything like it, tho.