DBI question

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

Hello Monks,

I have inherited some code, well actually alot of code that needs to be installed for a new client. The original author seems to be intentionally avoiding helping me out and has provided very little assistance, thus I am turning to you for some guidance.

The code that he is using to connect with DBI is as follows...

sub new
{
    my ($class, %flags) = @_;
    my ($self) = {};
    bless $self, ref($class) || $class;

    my $server = $flags{'-server'} || $ENV{'DBISERVER'} || die "No ser
+ver specified!\n";
    my $user = $flags{'-user'} || 'undef';
    my $pass = $flags{'-pass'};
    
    $self->{_DB_NORM_HANDLE} = DBI->connect('dbi:' . $server, $user, $
+pass, { RaiseError => 0, AutoCommit => 1 } ) or croak "Cannot connect
+ to $ENV{'DBISERVER'}\n";

    return $self;
}
[download]

The confusing part is the connect string is defined via a custom apache environment variable which he instructs as follows...

DBISERVER <dbi connect string>
[download]

I can handle this within the httpd conf file or even htacess, but what is the correct syntax?

Additionally, the DBI->connect string needs to be able to connect to a specific database on a remote server which is not accounted for in his code.

1) What changes are to be made to the DBI->connect?

2) How do I properly define the custom environment variable

Could someone assist in this matter assuming the following variables...

remote host: somedomain.com
mySQL DB: main_DB
mysql user: charlie
mysql pass: opensesame

TIA for any guidance...

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Re: DBI question by Roger (Parson) on Jan 15, 2004 at 06:25 UTC
The code `$ENV{'DBISERVER'}` retrieves the DBISERVER environment variable, if the '-server' parameter is not specified by the caller. You could override the default server string when you create the object - `my $obj = CLASSNAME->new( -server => "mysql:server=xxxx;database=xxxx", -user => "xxxx", -pass => "xxxx" );` [download] Where CLASSNAME is the name of your class module. I have written a demo below on using mysql via DBI: `#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use DBI; use DBD::mysql; my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:mysql:server=somedomain.com;database=main_ +DB", "USER","PASSWD") or die "Failed to connect to the database!"; my $sth = $dbh->prepare( qq{ SQL } ); $sth->execute(); my @column_headings = @{$sth->{NAME}}; while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow()) { # Data elements $row[0] ... $row[$#row-1] ... } $sth->finish; $dbh->disconnect;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re: DBI question
by Roger (Parson) on Jan 15, 2004 at 06:25 UTC

$ENV{'DBISERVER'}

my $obj = CLASSNAME->new(
              -server => "mysql:server=xxxx;database=xxxx",
              -user => "xxxx",
              -pass => "xxxx" );
[download]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use DBI;
use DBD::mysql;

my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:mysql:server=somedomain.com;database=main_
+DB", "USER","PASSWD")
        or die "Failed to connect to the database!";

my $sth = $dbh->prepare( qq{ SQL } );
$sth->execute();

my @column_headings = @{$sth->{NAME}};

while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow())
{
    # Data elements $row[0] ... $row[$#row-1]
    ...
}

$sth->finish;
$dbh->disconnect;
[download]

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