Insert function

student has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a script that I cannot get a good syntax check on. I have researched and can't figure out while my insert line isn't working. Any ideas.

 #!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI qw(:standard -debug);
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

#assign input items to variables
my $action = param('action');
my $pname = param('pname');
my $unit = param('unit');
my $qty = param('qty');
my $cost = param('cost');

if ($pname eq "" or $unit eq "" or $qty eq "" or $cost eq "") {
print "<html><b><h2><center>Please fill in the form completely. Use yo
+ur backspace button to go back and complete the form</h2></b></center
+>\n";
print "</HTML>\n";
}else {
insert into products (pname, unit, qty, cost) values ('pname', 'unit',
+ 'qty', 'cost');
}
[download]

Comment on Insert function Download Code

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Re: Insert function by VSarkiss (Monsignor) on Nov 23, 2004 at 02:08 UTC
You've got SQL smack in the middle of your Perl code. You can't just mix the two languages like that. You need to use an interface (most commonly DBI) to talk to your database. To learn how to use it, you may want to start looking at some Tutorials around here. There are also excellent books on the topic, as well as http://dbi.perl.org Do not rebuke them with harsh words ... but rather lead them gently - with URLs - so that they may learn wisdom.	[reply]
Re: Insert function by pg (Canon) on Nov 23, 2004 at 02:35 UTC
Perl does not support directly inserted SQL statement, as some lauguages do, like Pro*c etc. There might be new concepts to you when you learn DBI. Looking at your SQL statement, I think there is at least one thing you want to pay special attention to: prepared statement and placehold. Eventually, your code should look similar to this: `use DBI; my $dbh= DBI->connect("dbi:mysql:test", "", "", {RaiseError => 1, Auto +Commit => 0}); my $addprod = $dbh->prepare("insert into products (pname, unit, qty, c +ost) values (?, ?, ?, ?)"); ... $addprod->execute('apple', 'kg', 1, 1.99); ... $dbh->commit();#commit for each unit of work, or rollback, for really +simple cases, you can turn on AutoCommit ... $dbh->disconnect();` [download]	[reply] [d/l]