(Ovid) Re: Apache+cgi problem

You're not printing a header:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;
use CGI qw/ :standard /;

my $stats = 'statistics.txt';
open IN_RESULT,"< $stats" or die "Cannot open $stats for reading: $!";
my @in_result = <IN_RESULT>;
close (IN_RESULT);

my @armyImages = (
    '"images/icon_army_dwarf.gif"',
    '"images/icon_army_empire.gif"',
    '"images/icon_army_lizard.gif"',
    '"images/icon_army_orcs.gif"',
    '"images/icon_army_skaven.gif"'
);
              
print header;

print <<WEB_PAGE;
.
.
.
[download]

Note that I added the "standard" stuff and made a change or two.

I added use CGI. It's overkill here, though, so you could get away with print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"
I added strict. If you're not sure why you need strict, then you need it.
I also turned on warnings and taint checking. Taint checking doesn't seem useful here, but you are reading from an external source and if this program gets expanded, it could really protect you at some point.
I added a test to see if your file open succeeded. If you have a silent failure, your script would still run and you might have a hard time figuring out why.
I changed the name of your array to lower case to avoid confusion with the filehandle.
I printed the header -- which is they key issue here.

I have to admit, from the names of your images, I'm very curious to see what you're putting together :)

Cheers,
Ovid

Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.

Comment on (Ovid) Re: Apache+cgi problem Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: (Ovid) Re: Apache+cgi problem by Dog and Pony (Priest) on Feb 16, 2002 at 15:38 UTC
Not sure how to say this without sounding as if I am nitpicking an otherwise great post (++), but ah well, I feel bold. I just would like to point out that while "`Content-type: text/html\n\n`" works often, if you are gonna do that instead of useing CGI, you should really end the lines with double "`\015\012`" instead, like this:`print "Content-type: text/html\015\012\015\012";`. This is more cross-platform, and would work on most machines, except (I think ) VMS and non-ASCII machines. "\015\012" is the defined CRLF sequence for HTTP-headers. In reality though, I think that it is just as good to get into the habit of useing the CGI module right away. Just like you say. It takes care of all such concerns. :)	[reply]
(Ovid) Re(3): Apache+cgi problem by Ovid (Cardinal) on Feb 16, 2002 at 17:10 UTC
I can't find the link, but I seem to recall a response from Tom Christiansen to Abigail where he points out that the line endings are typically a non-issue. This is due to this being such a ubiquitous issue that every Web server (that I am aware of) checks the line endings and adjusts them as necessary. Otherwise, the vast majority of scripts ported to another OS could potentially die a horrible death. Cheers, Ovid Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.	[reply]
Re: (Ovid) Re(3): Apache+cgi problem by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Feb 16, 2002 at 18:36 UTC
I remember the post on clpm too .... I think the point here is that what your program is emitting are CGI headers and not HTTP ones where the line separators should be as described. Indeed the draft CGI/1.2 Specification says : The server must translate the header data from the CGI header field syntax to the HTTP header field syntax if these differ. For example, the character sequence for newline (such as Unix's ASCII NL) used by CGI scripts may not be the same as that used by HTTP (ASCII CR followed by LF). The server must also resolve any conflicts between header fields returned by the script and header fields that it would otherwise send itself. Update: I didn't find the original post to which Ovid referred however i did find This thread in CLPM which has all manner of good stuff in it /J\	[reply]
Re: (Ovid) Re: Apache+cgi problem by RuneK (Sexton) on Feb 16, 2002 at 15:58 UTC
Thanks Ovid, The cgi script is now working (after some rework using strict). The program is a warhammer fantasy statistics generator. It's in the beta-beta phase, but can be viewed at: www.skullport.dk/warhammer.htm. The script works but caused me another very strange problem that probably has nothing to do with the cgi script. When viewing "normal" html my images show ok, but the html images generated from the cgi script does not show at all even though the path is the same. Very wierd. Thanks a lot for the help.	[reply]