to get the data from the form: use the CGI module.
to get the data into the DB: use the DBI module.
i don't know if you're alreay familiar with the DBI documentation, if not, you will find some examples in there.

untainting all user input is an important thing, however, if you're using DBI.pm you may want to use placeholders; there's also a section on that in the DBI docs. if you use placeholders then DBI will take care of quoting the actual data correctly; but of course it will be helpful to additionally look into the data before if it contains the format you want.

about the cronjob: why don't you want to use a DB-connection directly? only if you expect high traffic this can be a bottleneck, but then i would consider using mod_perl instead of CGI, so the db connection can be programmed persistent.

In reply to Re: db user and cgi pardigm by tinita
in thread db user and cgi pardigm by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.