in reply to db user and cgi pardigm

Is there a better approach?

The only good reason I can think of to use a file and delayed update if if you have really big tables and lots of indexes so the updates work better as a batch with a disable index, insert, reneable index type approach.

Why not just: 

use CGI;
use DBI;
my $q = new CGI;
if ( $q->param('submit') ) {
    my ( $good_data, $errors ) = validate( $q );
    if ( $errors ) {
        show_form( $errors );
    }
    else {
        update_db( $good_data );
        my $pass = get_password();
        show_success( $pass );
    }
}
else {
    # default to show the form
    show_form();
}
exit 0;

[download]

cheers

tachyon

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: db user and cgi pardigm
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 01, 2004 at 01:36 UTC
    I am very sorry. I did not explain myself very well (as evidence that 3 of you 'took' my question the same way).

    Using the DBI module, won't I need to hardcode a database userid & password into my dvi script (for example, in the code above, in the 'update_db' function?

    I was thinking about the colon delimited file b/c I could avoid the script having access to direcly write data to my db.

    Does this explain it better? I hope so, and I am sorry for the misinterpretation.

    thanks!!!

[reply]
      Well, if you're determined to hand-update your database by forcing yourself to manually type your db's ID and password each time, then by all means write to a delimited file first. However, that solution isn't typical; there are a number of ways to secure a database password in a CGI environment, the most common approach being putting the ID and password into a file that is outside of your web server's root directory, setting the appropriate permissions to limit access, and then 'INCLUDE'-ing or "USE"-ing the file into your CGI. It all depends on your level of paranoia.

      Gary Blackburn
      Trained Killer

[reply]
        Exactly. Otherwise you're going to go to the trouble of writing a needlessly complex (and most likely inferior) solution to a problem that has already been solved by CGI and DBI.
[reply]

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