Road to Mechanize 0.7.0

I've been refactoring Mechanize for an 0.7.0 release. Basically I'm trying to clean the code up and there are a few features that I think are unnecessary, but I would like to ask people first.

  1. REXML as a parser.
  2. I want to remove support for REXML. I don't use it. Hpricot seems to do everything I need.

  3. 1.8.2 thru 1.8.4 support
  4. I've got a bunch of monkey patches for 1.8.2 thru 1.8.4. I'd like to remove these because I think most people are on 1.8.5 or up.

  5. WWW::Mechanize::Page#watch_for_set
  6. I am going to remove this method. It made sense when REXML was the main parser, since REXML was so slow. I think that Hpricot is fast enough that this method is not so useful.

I'm going to make 0.7.0 lazily build up form and link objects, which should give everyone a slight speed increase but makes watchforset obsolete (sort of).

I'm changing around the class names to be better organized, but they should all have the same methods. Also, if there are any feature requests, let me know!

Posted by Aaron PattersonPermalinkLeave your Comment »

4 Comments for “Road to Mechanize 0.7.0”

  1. Pinco Pallino says:

    Thumbs up for everything! But what about javascript support? Am I asking too much? ;-) If I remember well you were experimenting with it some time ago…

    Monday, 10 December 2007 @ 4:34pm

  2. Aaron Patterson says:

    This is a step on the way to javascript support. I’m using 0.7.0 as a stepping stone before 1.0.0, where I’ll be changing the API and integrating javascript support. I plan on really focusing on JS support after I get mechanize 0.7.0 released.

    JS support is definitely on my radar. Its just a very tough goal to achieve!

    Monday, 10 December 2007 @ 5:23pm

  3. dharana says:

    Does it mean Mechanize doesn’t work on 1.8.4? That’s what I am using :(

    Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 3:57am

  4. Aaron Patterson says:

    It should work fine on 1.8.4. I had requests to keep it compatible with 1.8.4, so it is.

    Wednesday, 27 February 2008 @ 9:31am

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