in reply to Unix Perl and Html

First off, I would not run the printstatus command from your script. This is a big security risk and most likely, the user your webserver uses is not allows sudo access (since it is implicitly defined by the admin).

Now a cronjob running printstatus into a logfile would be better. check out the man page for cron.. something like 0 0 * * * sudo /path/to/printstatus >> /path/to/logfile should work ok.

Depending on the output of printstatus (got a sample?) you could read it in line by line and print out the html using the CGI.pm.. also something like 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use CGI;

my $query=new CGI();
print $query->start_html(-title=>'Printer Status');

open(LOG," /path/to/logfile") || die "Cannot open logfile!: $!\n";
while(<LOG>) {
    print $query->br,"$_ ",br;
}
close(LOG);
exit;

[download]

-p

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Re: Re: Unix Perl and Html
by meccaxlr (Initiate) on Aug 16, 2001 at 17:47 UTC
    Thanks for your help thatguy monk! for security reasons my boss told me not to run a cron job for sudo printstatus. He told me to have my program read form 3 dump files in usr/lsys/printstatus which is the output of printstatus. He said running a sudo would be a bad idea. from there all i have to do is parse the files, any suggestions? Thanks a billion !
[reply]
      do you have some examples of the output of printstatus? (you can change the names/ips to protect your network, we just want the formatting).

      If the output is a single line per printer you can use my previous example, otherwise there might be some work involved :)

      Update:if the output is something along the lines of 

      name display toner level 
----------------------------------- 
printer1 toner low 25% 
printer2 toner low 1%
printer3 etc etc etc

      [download]

      then this should work ok.. 

      #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use CGI;

my $main=new CGI;
print $main->header;
print $main->start_html("Printer Status");

open(STATUSFILE," your_outfile") || die "Cannot open logfile!: $!\n";
while(<STATUSFILE>) {
        chomp;
        if (! ($_=~ /-----------------------------------/)) {
                #my ($printer,$display,$toner,$level) = split(/ /, $_)
+;
                my @status = split(/ /, $_);
                if (($status[0] eq "name") && ($status[1] eq "display"
+)) {
                        print "<center><table width=250 border=1><tr a
+lign=center>\n";
                        for (@status) {
                                print "<td><b>$_</b></td>\n";
                        }
                        print "</tr>\n";
                } else {
                        for (@status) {
                                print "<td>$_</td>\n";       
                        }
                        print "</tr>\n";
                }
        }
}
print "</table>\n";       
close(STATUSFILE);
exit;

      [download]

      -p
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        I just went into the files my boss specified. When i go into the directory /usr/lsys/printstatus under admin i come up with 3 files 'printstatus.out' 'lpc_status.printing1' and 'lpc_status.printing2'. when i go into printstatus.out there is this nice information window thats something like
        name display toner level
        -----------------------------------
        printer1 toner low 25%
[reply]
        I just went into the files my boss specified. When i go into the directory /usr/lsys/printstatus under admin i come up with 3 files 'printstatus.out' 'lpc_status.printing1' and 'lpc_status.printing2'. when i go into printstatus.out there is this nice information window thats something like
        name display toner level
        -----------------------------------
        printer1 toner low 25%
[reply]
        Thank you thatguy monk. Since I am new to perl does this program read from the printstatus file, parse it and send it to a log file??!?!

        I'm just a perl peon

[reply]
        #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use CGI;

my $main=new CGI;
print $main->header;
print $main->start_html ("Printer Status");

open(usr/lsys/printstatus/printstatus.out ,"logfile.html");

while(<usr/lsys/printstatus/printstatus.out>) {
    chomp;
    if (! ($_=~/----------------------------/)) {
            #my ($printer,$display,$toner,$level) = split(/ /, $_);
        my @status = split(/ /, $_);
        if (($status[0] eq "name") && ($status[1] eq "display")) {

            print "<center><table width=250 border=1><tr align=center>
+\n";
            for (@status) {
                print "<td><b>$_</b></td>\n";
            }
            print "</tr>\n";
        }
    }
}
print "</table>\n";
close (usr/lsys/printstatus/printstatus.out);
exit;

        [download]
        Would this be an accurate representation of this program? Did i substitute the correct variables?
[reply]
[d/l]

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