Passing data back to calling page

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

I am still quite a novice at this. I was succeful at sending numbers from my "index.htm" page to a file called "testscript.pl" which contains my secret formula. I now want the script to return the answer to the same "index.htm" page, but the response clears "index.htm" and creates a new page called "testscript.pl". I don't want to clear the original .htm page. I simply wnat to present the answer in it some how. I used a form to send the data to the script file, but there doesn't seem to be a form for receiving data back from a script file. Is what I'm trying to do even possible?

Thank you

Comment on Passing data back to calling page

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Re: Passing data back to calling page by cormanaz (Deacon) on Oct 19, 2009 at 23:58 UTC
Here is a simple AJAX example that uses Perl for the backend. Like DStaal said, that's what you need to do exactly what you want. OTOH if you don't have some good reason to keep the same page around, you could just use Perl to generate the HTML to begin with and reload the whole thing when you need the new data. Here is a tutorial for that.	[reply]
Re^2: Passing data back to calling page by mortalhero (Novice) on Oct 20, 2009 at 00:58 UTC
Thanks guys. I thought I was missing something very simple. It was driving me crazy. Now I know I need to change my strategy. Thanks again	[reply]
Re: Passing data back to calling page by DStaal (Chaplain) on Oct 19, 2009 at 20:54 UTC
Not without some Javascript trickery on the page, no. HTML pages render when they are loaded, and are static from then on. You'll either need to load the page again, (which to the browser is a new page) or find some AJAX snippet which does what you want. Basically: HTML is not designed that way. This makes what you want very difficult.	[reply]
Re: Passing data back to calling page by ww (Archbishop) on Oct 20, 2009 at 01:48 UTC
Actually, you can do pretty close to what you ask without using AJAX or similar... so long as you're not concerned about the change in the filename/URL. If that's so, simply include the original renderable content of index.html, from immediately after the `<body>` tag to just before the `</body>` tag, replacing the input form with the an appropriately formatted section to render the "answer." This has some drawbacks, particularly if your original page is very large, but it also has the advantage of sidestepping problems for the visitor who chooses to browse with javascript disabled and it will give the visitor the impression that s/he is still on the same page (except for the contents of the address bar).	[reply] [d/l] [select]