Perl: LWP::UserAgent returns always code 200 for redirected urls

Question

I have a simple url which does a 302 temp. move to another page.

I try to get to if the URL returns code 200 (for OK) to retrieve it and to stop if something else than 200 is returned.

My code:

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new( env_proxy => 1,keep_alive => 1, timeout => 30, agent => "Mozilla/4.76 [en] (Win98; U)");
my $response = $ua->get( $currenturl);
print $response->code;

The code above ALWAYS returns 200, even if its 302. I tested the header response using FireBug in Firefox. The URL returns "302 Moved Temporarily" in the Net module in FireBug. But the code above in perl returns 200. Why?

Answer 1

LWP::UserAgent automatically follows HTTP redirects. You can disable such behavior by passing max_redirect option set to 0.

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new( max_redirect => 0, env_proxy => 1,keep_alive => 1, timeout => 30, agent => "Mozilla/4.76 [en] (Win98; U)");
my $response = $ua->get( $currenturl);
print $response->code;