I'm trying to do some funky things with HTTP file uploading, i'm having trouble getting CGI to work for me. Basically, it seems that i've stumbled upon a catch 22 that ends in: you can't have access to anything in your CGI variable until you're done reading all of <STDIN> (which may be substantial, and thus my very desire to acess that OTHER info first). The problem can be explained like so, by creating a CGI object STDIN is parsed and the contents of any uploaded files are read into a temp file, using the "upload_hook" feature available, you cannot yet have access to the contents of a CGI variable because it isnt' created yet, and creating one will try to parse STDIN and run your upload hook, and on and on...

let's get contextual, a simple example showing that I can't access $cgi, and therefore (right?) any of the other CGI variables that got POSTed with the file! here's a true blue script you can toss on a server and hit, it'll show you a form and when you submit it if you commented out the "ERROR!" line, it'll print the contents of your uploaded file (we suggest you upload a small text file)

#!/usr/bin/perl 

$|++;
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;

unless( $ENV{REQUEST_METHOD} eq 'POST' ) {
   #show the itty bitty upload form:
   my $cgi = new CGI;
   print $cgi->header() . qq{
      <form action="file_upload" method="post" enctype="multipart/form
+-data">
         <input type="file" name="myFile">
         <input type=submit>
      </form>
   };
}
else {
  print "Content-Type: text/plain\n\n"; # [sic] can't use CGI yet, 'me
+mber?  
  sub hook;
  
  my $cgi = new CGI( \&hook, undef, 0 );
  #use the hook, and don't use a tempfile, i'll handle that myself, 
  #don't pass any "data" to hook either, what would i pass?
  my %uploads;
  sub hook {  
     my ($filename, $buffer, $bytes_read, $data) = @_;

     my $fh;
     unless( exists $uploads{$filename} ) { 
#oh yeah, and $filename might not be unique either, but what other cho
+ice do i have?! this condition tells me that it's our first time on t
+his file
       my $somevar = $cgi->param('somevar'); #ERROR!
         #Can't call method "param" on an undefined value 
         
       warn "Getting an upload for $filename";        
       $uploads{$filename} = 1;
     }
     print $buffer if $buffer; #back at ya!
  }
}
[download]

now you may say "well, you don't even need the $cgi variable in your hook!" and i'll tell you that i do, this is only a demo. ;) specifically, if i could have access to the form name that contained the file the hook is currently running against, i'd be happy. (in this case that would be "myFile")

thanks ye brothers and sisters, your thoughts i will treasure.

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