Passing params between CGIs

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

Hello monks,

Being relatively new to CGI, the first thing I did was code up a vanilla HTML form that passes parameters to a CGI.pm script which successfully uses them to talk to a database and simply dumps the results to the screen. The next step is to place links next to each result that will provide additional information when clicked. This information must be dynamically retrieved from a different table in the database. I suppose I could use my cgi object to print a submit button with some parameters, but that's messy; I simply want embedded links that transfer parameters to the linked cgi script. Is this possible? Here's what I had thought would Do What I Mean, ie., providing additional non-HTML attribute/value pairs to the a tag:

...

while ($data = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref()) {
    last if ++$count > $best;
    print "$count) ",join(' // ', @$data)," ",
        $cgi->a({href=>'showquery.cgi',
             query=>$data->[0]},'query')," ",
        $cgi->a({href=>'showhit.cgi',
             query=>$data->[0],
             hit=>$data->[1]},'hit'),
        $cgi->br();
}
[download]

The elements dereferenced from $data are defined. Currently, all that showquery.cgi does is print all parameters passed to it (and yes, headers and such are properly initialized beforehand). I get a blank page.

How should I go about the task of dynamically passing information from a webpage interface served up by one cgi script, to another cgi script?

Many thanks

Comment on Passing params between CGIs Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Passing params between CGIs by freddo411 (Chaplain) on May 23, 2003 at 20:54 UTC
Fundimentally there are only a couple of ways to pass data into a CGI: a) Within a cookie b) Within fields within the invoking HTML, hidden or otherwise c) Within the arguments in the URL I favored choice usually depends the amount of information, and how you'd like to reveal/hide it. Cheers --Fred ----- Nothing is too wonderful to be true -- Michael Faraday	[reply]
Re: Passing params between CGIs by tcf22 (Priest) on May 23, 2003 at 20:50 UTC
I think that you are talking about passing parameters to another CGI through the query string. Perhaps something like this: `$cgi->a({href=>"showhit.cgi?query=$data->[0]&hit=$data->[1]"}, 'hit');` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Passing params between CGIs by Anonymous Monk on May 23, 2003 at 20:59 UTC
I told you I was new to CGI. What I should have mentioned is that I am fairly new to Web programming in general; it's these sorts of common sense things that I expect to shoot me in the foot. Yes that does exactly what I want. Thanks so much.	[reply]