Ok, this is a meditation because some other people might not have thought of this use of a CGI script written in Perl, and because it is, IMHO, quite secure.

Imagine yourself having a website, and even imagine yourself having a dynamic one, database-based, with Perl as the language of choice (of course, there is no need to disguise Perl in PHP :-)

Well, imagine also that you don't have lots of time to update your website, so that you have implemented a site management/update feature in your website Perl scripts.

Now, meditate... You would also like to be able to upload files (e.g. image files for your articles) to your site. You could use the CGI.pm module, but you think that the file upload function there is quite slow and you prefer exploring your brain to find a cooler way to do it.

Well, here is my meditation (which has actually been implemented right now!):

1)Your updating CGI script has a file input textfield, so that you can select a file of your hard disk to upload.

2) When you submit the script, the CGI attempts a SOCK_STREAM connection to your computer, on a port that only YOU knows and asks for the file if it finds somebody listenning. The CGI knows your IP, provided that your are not behind a silly firewall, with $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR}.

3) This "somebody listenning" is nothing else than a little file server, written in Perl of course (10 lines) that you launched right before you accessed the CGI script in your browser (or at least, before you submitted the form containing the file to upload).

4) The connection is established, and the file transferred, fast. When the local file server has done its job, just shut it down and keep meditating. There are so many things you can still achieve in the Perl mankind.

5) Amen

In reply to Cool CGI File Uploading by gaggio

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