Anomaly with GET?POST Redirect, revisited issue.

Libbwww'ers  (maybe it should be Libbwwwites?):

Anyway I've posted before on a variety of issues (answers and questions),
and recently ran into a wierd one.  I'm open for suggestions/opionions and
I'll run them down.

I am trying to robotically drive a web site that appears to be:

Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0

My software is routinely driving all kinds of other sites that use IIS 5.0.

This particular site is secure (HTTPS).  Every page on the site does a POST,
followed by a redirect to the same location, except that the redirect sends
the POST data back over in a GET.  Still no great shakes as many other sites
do something like that.

On this particular site though I get intermittent:

HTTP/1.1 403 Access Forbidden

errors on the POST (not the subsequent GET mind you).

I have a good tracing utility and it appears that the HTTP traffic sent by
my robot and a running version of IE are exactly the same.

Two other interesting pieces of data.

1)  My robot has a setting wherein I can drive POST redirects with POST's
rather than GETS.  If I turn that switch on so that all POST's redirect with
POST rather than emulating IE (which redirects with GETS), then everything
works great, eg. no intermittent 403's.

2)  If I set the LIBWWW short/long writepostdelay to large values
(10sec/90sec), at certain critical pages, I can make it work with the
POST/GET redirect scheme.

Any ideas?

thx
fhc

Fred Covely
BCF Technology
fcovely@bcftech.com

Received on Wednesday, 21 August 2002 03:21:04 UTC