Need help with simple form input

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

Hiya Perl Monks.

Would one of you most helpful people be able to provide me with a snippet of code that can perform the following:

1. Take input from a web form and place it into variables
2. Validate the variables

I have read in other posts that there are secure and insecure ways of performing this. I need it to be locked down as much as possible as it it going to be running on a public-facing server. I read something about a -T option or something on the #!/usr/bin/perl command.
With regards to validation, i just need it to check one of the variables to make sure it only contains characters/numbers and no symbols

Cheers

Comment on Need help with simple form input

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•Re: Need help with simple form input by merlyn (Sage) on Aug 23, 2002 at 22:59 UTC
There are plenty of snippets in `perldoc CGI` and `perldoc perlsec`. Try reading those first, and asking questions based on what you've read. If you've already read those, then try reading some more advanced materials, like my columns. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply]
Re: Need help with simple form input by Popcorn Dave (Abbot) on Aug 23, 2002 at 23:13 UTC
Merlyn has a good point there. There are tons of sites with sample code. You might look at the Big Nose Bird web site. They've got a lot of stuff like that and it's geared more towards the beginner. Good luck! Some people fall from grace. I prefer a running start...	[reply]
Re: Re: Need help with simple form input by Mr. Muskrat (Canon) on Aug 23, 2002 at 23:30 UTC
Why go there when you can get everything you need right here? All you have to do is Super Search for it!	[reply]
Re: Need help with simple form input by Cody Pendant (Prior) on Aug 24, 2002 at 09:02 UTC
If you really need a quick and dirty version, you can just use this: `use CGI; CGI::ReadParse();` [download] now all your form field inputs are in a hash called "%in". The keys are the form field names. If you've got a field called "username", it's in $in{'username'} -- I know people will frown on this because it's not the correct way to go, not object-oriented, but hell, it's quick, isn't it? Now all you have to do is a regular expression. `if($in{'username'} !~ m/a-z0-9/)` and you're done. Watch out for multiple values from checkboxes or duplicate-name fields though. -- `($_='jjjuuusssttt annootthheer pppeeerrrlll haaaccckkeer')=~y/a-z//s;print;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]