inblosam has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am trying to login and then post to a site. I have my script successfully working on another form, but now this one (with file fields--only difference I can think of) gives me some problems. When I try to post to this site it gives me this error:
Server: www.site.com
Server: 'www.site.com'
Date / Time: 06/26/02 00:13:38
Browser: Mozilla/4.5
Error: ODBC Error Code = S1000 (General error)
[Oracle][ODBC][Ora]ORA-00936: missing expression 

The error occurred while processing an element with a general identifi
+er of (CFQUERY), occupying document position (394:3) to (394:60).

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I don't understand why I am now getting this error. Do I need to set a content_type differently (but why would that affect what seems to be an issue with the database)? Any ideas? Here is what my code looks like: 
#!/usr/lib/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Request::Common;
use HTTP::Cookies;
use LWP::Simple;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new(file => 'cookie_jar', autosave =>1)
+);
$ua->agent( "Mozilla/4.5" );
# do redirects after post
push @{ $ua->requests_redirectable }, 'POST';

$ua->request(POST "http://www.site.com/login.cfm",
                        {
                            username    =>"test",
                            password    =>"testabc",
                            sid            =>"$sid",
                            submit        =>"Submit"
                        });

my $request = $ua->request(POST "http://www.site.com/editproduct.cfm",
            {            
                            name            =>"test",    
                            version            =>"1.1",
                            prodnote        =>"test",
                            file            =>'/docroot/filename.exe'
                            product_ID        =>"888999",
                            session_id        =>"3298220938434",
                            update            =>"Update"
                        });

$b = $request->is_success ? "Worked\n" : "Error.\n";
my $a = $request->as_string;
print $a;

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Michael Jensen
michael at inshift.com
http://www.inshift.com

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Causing an ODBC error in form post?
by dws (Chancellor) on Jun 26, 2002 at 07:41 UTC
    I have my script successfully working on another form, but now this one (with file fields--only difference I can think of) gives me some problems.

    If you're getting ODBC errors form a site when you synthesize a form POST, then that site's code is... brittle. It kind of looks like they may be building a query from fields passed by form. At best, a security problem waiting to happen.

    Two things jump out form your code. First, you are passing an anonymous hash to POST rather than an anonymous array. The HTTP::Request::Common POD shows anonymous arrays (as do the example in the Perl Cookbook), so try that. I suspect you aren't creating the HTTP POST that you think you are.

    The other is that you're not checking $request->is_success after your first post. That might be worth doing.

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[d/l]
[select]
      I read the docs on HTTP::Request::Common but with my script I am doing some things with useragent that they don't show, and so I am not quite sure how to implement an anonymous hash as you suggested, versus my current method using an array. Do I merely change the {} to brackets? Thanks!

      Michael Jensen
      michael at inshift.com
      http://www.inshift.com
[reply]
        Do I merely change the {} to brackets?

        That'll do the trick.

[reply]

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