Re: [OT?] What does Firefox do that lua-curl can't?

[Niccolo Medici <niccolomedici@...>]

On 6/27/18, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is a package on Luarocks called lua-curl. With it, I can surf
> the Internet form inside my Lua program.
>
> Or so I thought. [...] I could do general surfing thta way but did not succeed
> in logging in to a site on which I am a registered user.


Sadly, nowadays you may not even be able to build a web scrapper using
just an http library.

Many mainstream sites build their content with JavaScript (long gone
are the days of "progressive enhancement / graceful degradation"). A
JavaScript engine is not enough: you need to implement all the APIs of
the browser (like "local storage").