Form action with TT2 and FB v3.03

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

Greetings great sages

I have a question about form action using TT2 and FB.

Here's the details.

I have a an FB-based script using a TT2 template. The template sets the baseurl meta tag and creates the initial form using this instantion of an FB object

     85 my $form = CGI::FormBuilder->new(
     86                 template => {
     87                              type=> 'TT2',
     88                              template => 'contact.tt',
     89                              variable => 'contact' },
     90                 name   => 'contactform',
     91                 id     => 'contactform',
     92                 fields => \@formfields ,
     93                 method => 'post',
     94 );
[download]

If I use this, I get The requested URL /<scriptname> was not found on this server. error message because, upon form post, there is an attempt to load <baseurl>/<scriptname> and not <baseurl>/cgi/<scriptname>

I have also tried

action => '<baseurl>'/cgi/'scriptname' in the script - Result: an HTTP 500 Internal Server Error with the script url still intact
action => './cgi/<scriptname>' - Result: gives some errors in the cgi script and the url still intact
action => './<scriptname>' - Result: the error The requested URL /contact.cgi was not found on this server.
setting the baseurl to '<original baseurl>/cgi/' in the template - Result: promptly lose my stylesheets and other constant site data based on baseurl

Okay, I have to debug my script some, and I will be looking for something to help with automatic form submission and testing.

However, I have found that the form action as in 0 (accept FB's default) and 3 don't give the desired result of form post to the original form url. Method 2 gives the desired result, and I'm still out with the jury on method 1.

I can understand why method 3 fails. The scriptname is concatenated to the baseurl and this appears to be what happens with FB's default too.

I'm using method 2 because it works

I would like to know if there is a way to avoid mentioning the scriptname in the instantion of the FB object when using a directory structure on cgi scripts or would it be better to not have that directory structure? Is this the tradeoff?

Comment on Form action with TT2 and FB v3.03 Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Form action with TT2 and FB v3.03 by Anonymous Monk on Jul 25, 2008 at 14:00 UTC
If the default doesn't work, its a bug in CGI::FormBuilder. Should use `$ENV{SCRIPT_NAME} or $cgi->script_name`, guaranteed to be correct.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Form action with TT2 and FB v3.03 by LesleyB (Friar) on Jul 25, 2008 at 23:12 UTC
As the script is on Debian stable it's not the most up-to-date version of FB - which is at v3.05. I couldn't see anything in the active or resolved bug lists that appeared to relate to this. I explicitly set `action => $ENV{SCRIPT_NAME},` and that returns `action="/cgi/<scriptname>` in the form. I have now updated CGI.pm and CGI::FormBuilder and the problem seems to still exist when using a default undeclared action at the later versions. UpdateMy Perl isn't good enough to understand FormBuilder.pm yet but I've filed a bug with the workaround you suggested Thank you for your help	[reply] [d/l] [select]