And yes, the double colon does mean Perl. However, I know that Python also has the same class modeled after the Perl module. So even if py- is your favorite prefix, this should still be useful.

WWW::Mechanize gives you basic access to a “web browser” from your Perl scripts. It has the concept of getting, putting, ticking and clicking. Use an image map, or enter text into a text box. It even has a back button! Using all these and more, one can make quite the script to do most anything. I’ve used this before to create a script that logged into a Google Search Appliance and download a backup file. (Since for some reason, there is no way to push backups from within a GSA)

More recently, I decided to automate the downloading of PDF statements from my bank’s website. This is a popular use for WWW::Mechanize, and I’ll go through a quick script which will do just this.
» Read more: Automating the Web with WWW::Mechanize