You're on the right "track," so to speak. CGI is the ticket...with one exception. You may want to look at a templating module like HTML::Template (hopefully it will be installed on your web host) for returning the data to the HTML page. Burying your HTML in the CGI may be instructive, but H::T may be easier to adapt from whatever Dreamweaver generates. To return HTML results from CGI will require not only a knowledge of HTML, but of a more obfuscated version in CGI.

Seems to me you are asking these questions too late, but maybe your course intends to simulate the pressure of trying to write something against an unrealistic deadline with unfamiliar tools?

However, you have come to the right place to get some help sorting out your problems. Your first task though is to do a little research. Take a look around CPAN for modules that mention HTML and Template in their names. Also take a look there for CGI and Template or Form related modules.

Good luck with the project (and try to fit some sleep in somewhere along the way).

I would caution you about using WYSIWYG editors for HTML. I don't know how DreamWeaver does, but many HTML editors create such convoluted HTML that it's almost impossible to go on there and tweak it. I've found that I almost always have to tweak the HTML that's generated, so this might be a problem for you. This might not even apply with DreamWeaver; and it might be such a good program that you never have to tweak the HTML. But just keep this in mind as you're choosing your tools.

I would caution you about using WYSIWYG editors for HTML.


---

I would agree with that, but having used Dreamweaver pretty extensively in the past, I've found it good for mockups, *and* it doesn't muck up your code by adding in superfluous tags like MS Word or Frontpage does. Since it's probably due in a couple weeks anyway, he could just download a trial version, too, if cost is an object.

Besides, it sounds like in the OP's situation, getting something together quick in Dreamweaver and tweaking it is probably easier than doing it by hand, especially considering he doesn't know HTML very well, and it doesn't seem to be the focus of the class.

-- Burvil

For an entry into CGI, there is of course no way around Ovid's CGI-course.

If you have any specific questions, you will find Perlmonks a good place to ask them. Please, ask only specific questions, add some code you have written, show the Monastery you made a genuine effort of finding a solution and you will find the Monks most helpful.

Kudos to you for starting this while there are a few weeks left before it's due. ;-)

I really like Arachnophilia for creating clean, straightforward HTML. If you are stuck using something (like FrontPage), that adds a lot of extraneous tags, I recommend HTML Tidy for cleaning up the mess.

HTH,

I know nothing about HTML.

Do not use DreamWeaver. Do not use DreamWeaver. That way might seem easier, but down that path you will find pain and suffering, because the HTML that you get out of DreamWeaver will be very hard to break into manageable pieces and integrate with the logic in your Perl script.

You can teach yourself enough HTML to get this done in about an hour using information that is available on the web. This is not very much more time than it would take to learn DreamWeaver, and the resulting HTML will be *MUCH* easier to work with and to integrate into your Perl code. HTML is very easy to learn, and will take much less time and effort than you spent learning Perl, to say nothing of Java or C++. An intelligent person with a natural bent toward computers can master HTML in a long weekend, and you don't need to master it; you just need to learn the basics.

Yes, CGI is the way to go for this. You will use a form element in your HTML, which will contain the various inputs, including a submit button. The action attribute of the form element will point to your Perl script. There are various CGI-related modules on the CPAN (see search.cpan.org), which you can use to get the form input. Some of them (for instance, CGI.pm) have complex interfaces for things like generating HTML, but you can safely ignore all of that. The only thing you need them for is to collect the form input. For generating the HTML, it's much easier to just learn HTML and use print statements (maybe with heredocs and/or the qq[somestring] quoting mechanism, since the strings you are printing will often contain quotation marks).

As far as sending the results back to the browser, the most important thing to know is that you have to print out the HTTP headers first, then a blank line, then whatever HTML you want to send. The only HTTP header that is mandatory is the Content-type header, which will look probably like this: Content-type: text/html\n

Enjoy this assignment. You've waited to the last second, but nonetheless writing CGI scripts is one of the easier and more pleasant programming assignments you could be given. Once you've written one of them, it becomes easy to whip together another one real quick sometime later. Before you know it you'll be doing your layouts with stylesheets, scripting events with Javascript, manipulating page elements via the DOM, and loading in parts of pages dynamically with XMLHttpRequest. But for now, just do the basic CGI script.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use CGI qw(:standard);
use strict;

print header();

print <<HERE;
<html>
<head>
<title>test of javascript</title>
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--  Begin
function launchwin()
{
window.open("../jspopup.html", "dialog", "width=300, height=250, scrol
+lbars=yes, resizable=yes");
}
// End -->
</script>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<form>
<input type=button value="Click here to try the JavaScript!"
onClick="launchwin()">
</form>
</center>
</body>
</html>
HERE
[download]

print <<END_HTML;
Content-type: text/html
 
<HTML>
<HEAD> <TITLE>Thanks!</TITLE> </HEAD>
<BODY bgcolor="#ffffff"><br>
<P>Thanks for visiting our site : $username!</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
END_HTML
[download]