in reply to Formatting CGI

Well... your (CGI|Perl) script will have to output HTML or something the client will understand anyway. Most simple Perl web scripts I see do something like: 
print STDOUT >>EOT;
<table>
<tr>
    <td>FIRST BUTTON</td>
    <td>SECOND BUTTON</td>
    <td>THIRD BUTTON</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>I AM ON THE SECOND ROW</td>
    <td>YOU ARE LISTENING TO ME TYPE</td>
    <td>MY NAME IS MORT</td>
</tr>
</table>
EOT

[download]
So really, it's a matter of doing both. (Note that CGI.pm provides a bevy of methods for generating HTML for you. There are also nice things like Text::Template and HTML::Mason. In a simple case, there's nothing wrong with using a here doc and embedding your HTML in the script. Just don't use a page full of print statements.)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: Re: Formatting CGI
by brysonic venture (Initiate) on Apr 06, 2000 at 23:43 UTC
    I don't have any problems doing it with html, its a matter of getting the CGI to output it ie.. (This does not work) 
    #!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI qw/:standard :html3/;
 
print header,
    start_html("Soft Bug Buddy"),
$action = param('action');
print_bugform();

sub print_bugform {
    print start_form;
     print table({-border=>''},
     Tr({-align=>CENTER, -valign=>TOP},
        [
        th([

           print submit(-name=>'action',-value=>'whatever'),
           print submit(-name=>'action',-value=>'whomever'),
           print submit(-name=>'action',-value=>'wherever'),
           'Some kind of text',
          
       print submit(-name=>'action',-value=>'quit')
          ])
        
     ]
));
}

    [download]
    thx again,
[reply]
[d/l]
      It doesn't work right because you shouldn't be print-ing the submit buttons; the submit method (as well as the other HTML methods in CGI.pm) *returns* the HTML, so you should just take the print statements out, and it should work just fine. 
          th([ submit(-name=>'action', -value=>'whatever'),

      [download]
      and so on.

      By the way, you don't *have* to use the CGI.pm methods if you don't want to, or if you're more comfortable just printing out HTML. Personally, I've never found much of a use for them.

      As Abigail wrote: "CGI.pm's set of methods that output html tags seems to me as useful as an English.pm module with a method for every word, and using that instead of writing plain text."

[reply]
[d/l]
        Imagine that, after being slapped around a bit by Guy Steele, the W3C announces that, effective immediately, the official format for HTML is no longer 
        -HTML-
    -HEAD-
        -TITLE-Bla-/TITLE-
    -/HEAD-
    -BODY-
         -IMG src="foo.bar"-
    -/BODY-
-/HTML-
-/CODE-

(think &lt;&gt; instead of --), but instead

<CODE>
(in-html (cons (in-head (in-title "Bla")) (cons (in-body (img :source 
+"foo.bar")) '()))

        [download]
        . Imagine also that, at the very same time, both AOL/Netscape and Microsoft have signed treaties promising that they'll follow the W3C specs by the letter. Now, if you've got a shitload of code floating around which extensively uses literal HTML (be it quoted, with here-docs, or using the __DATA__ facility), you're going to have a lot of editing to do... (and just try to cook up an HTML-to-SEXP translator script!). Whereas if you're using the CGI module's facilities, all you have to do is change a few functions here and there, and you're all set - and your CGI programs will be the only ones that work with the newest releases of Nutscrape and Exploder!
[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom