in reply to UBB find user id code

What the others said :)

Separate the HTML output from the logic: this code has the main effect of returning a userid, and the side effect of outputing the HTML header. At some point, you won't want to do the two things together.

Why not return undef, or '' as the not logged in value? I hope those will never match a valid userid, and also allows you to write: 

my $userid=getuserid or castigate_user;

[download]
. Similarly, $exact_file can be treated the same way.

Use if as a statement modifier, rather than as a test in it's own right, then the code becomes more linear, and easier to read: 

sub get_userid {
  my $member_dir = "../../Members/";
  my $member_file ="memberslist.cgi";

  return undef unless my %cookies = fetch CGI::Cookie;
  return undef unless $cookies{'UserName'};
  return undef unless $cookies{'Password'};

  my $id = $cookies{'UserName'}->value;
  my $password =  $cookies{'Password'}->value;

  my $exact_file;
  $file = "$member_dir/$member_file";
  open (FH, "< $file") or die "Could not open $file: $!";
  while (<FH>){
    chomp;
    my ($login, $junk_file) = split(/|!!|/);
    if ($login eq $id) {
      $exact_file=$junk_file;
      last;
    }
  }
  close FH;
  return undef unless $exact_file;

  $file ="$member_dir/$exact_file.cgi";
  open (FH, "< $file") or die "Could not open $file";
  my @user_list=(<FH>, <FH>);
  close FH;

  return undef unless $user_list[0] eq $id and
         $user_list[1] eq $password;

  return $id;
}

[download]

Finally, do you really need to have an arbitarilly named password file for every single user? Why not just store the password directly in the members.cgi file?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: UBB find user id code
by LeGo (Chaplain) on Oct 10, 2001 at 01:14 UTC
    I do appreciate the suggestions. I like what you have much more than what I had.

    As to your last question that is just what UBB does. That is not something that I do. It is something that seems slow for my use, but I have to work with what they have given me. Again, Thanks.

    My code as stands is now the following taking information from all of the above users. Thanks to those. This works and the subroutine will return either undef or the users id. 

    
#!d:\perl\bin\perl.exe -w
use strict;
use CGI;
use CGI::Cookie;

print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";
my $user = get_userid();
print "UNDEF" if($user eq undef);
print "<p>whoa whoa whao $user" if($user ne undef);

sub get_userid {
  my $member_dir = "../../Members/";
  my $member_file ="memberslist.cgi";

  return undef unless my %cookies = CGI::Cookie->fetch;
  return undef unless $cookies{'UserName'} and $cookies{'Password'};

  my $id = $cookies{'UserName'}->value;
  my $password =  $cookies{'Password'}->value;

  my $exact_file;
  my $file = "$member_dir/$member_file";
  open (FH, "< $file") or die "Could not open $file: $!";
  while( my($login, $junkfile) = split /\|!!\|/, <FH>) {
    if ($login eq $id) {
       chomp $junkfile;
       $exact_file = $junkfile;
       last;
    }
  }

  close FH;

  return undef unless $exact_file;

  $file ="$member_dir/$exact_file.cgi";
  open (FH, "< $file") or die "Could not open $file";
  chomp (my @user_list= (<FH>, <FH>));
  close FH;
  return undef unless $user_list[0] eq $id and
         $user_list[1] eq $password;

  return $id;
}

    [download]
    LeGo
[reply]
[d/l]

      D'oh! The point of undef is that it evaluates to false in logic statements (see the compound statement section of perlsyn). So you don't need to explicitely test against it: 

      my $user = get_userid();
print "UNDEF" unless $user;
print "<p>whoa whoa whao $user" if $user;

      [download]
      (oh, you don't need to bracket the conditions, when they're modifiers, and unless is the equivalent of "if not")

[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom