title: Using a Ruby script to login to a website via https
body: <p>Alright, so here's the dealio: I'm working on a Ruby app that'll take data from a website, and aggregate that data into an XML file.</p>
  
  <p>The website I need to take data from does not have any APIs I can make use of, so the only thing I can think of is to login to the website, sequentially load the pages that have the data I need (in this case, PMs; I want to archive them), and then parse the returned HTML.</p>
  
  <p>The problem, though, is that I don't know of any ways to programatically simulate a login session.</p>
  
  <p>Would anyone have any advice, or know of any proven methods that I could use to successfully login to an https page, and then programatically load pages from the site using a temporary cookie session from the login? It doesn't have to be a Ruby-only solution -- I just wanna know how I can actually do this. And if it helps, the website in question is one that uses Microsoft's .NET Passport service as its login/session mechanism.</p>
  
  <p>Any input on the matter is welcome. Thanks.</p>