Melodious Monks,

A small meditation on a current project.

You have an sql db and are going to dynamically generate a record-input screen with Perl script. First temptation is do something like this (pseudo-code):

$sql = "show columns from my_table";
execute
while (there are $field_names) {
     print "<input type='text' name='".$field_name."'>"
}
[download]

and then the reverse when the form is submitted. BUT, I've now given away the actual column names of my table - one small piece of real info for hackers to exploit.

I could, instead, have a hash of "public" names:

$public_names{$field_1} = "foo";
$public_names{$field_2} = "bar";
foreach $key (keys %public_names) {
     print "<input type='text' name='".$public_names{$key}."'>"
}
[download]

But now I have this intermediate association table to maintain. Sooooo, I thought a nifty alternative would be a home-made field name encoder/decoder:

$sql = "show columns from my_table";
execute
while (there are $field_names) {
     $public_name = &encode($field_name);
     print "<input type='text' name='".$public_name."'>"
}

sub encode() {
     $scrambled =~ tr/[a-z]/[w,t,5,s,c,....,7,a]/;
     return $scrambled;
}
[download]

with a corresponding decode sub for the returning values in the submitted form. No association tables to maintain - and my field name info is secure.

Wadda y'all think?

---

In reply to Perl to protect database field name info by punch_card_don

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