in reply to Re: Retrieving Form Data
in thread Retrieving Form Data

Here's a sample of what sompage.pl might be like: 
use strict;

if ($ARGV[0] eq "submit") {
   &submit_data;
}
else { $view_form; }

####################

sub view_form {
    print "<HTML>\n";
    print " <BODY>\n\n";
    
    print "  <FORM METHOD= \"POST\" ACTION= \"somepage.pl?submit\">\n"
+;
    print "   <B>Pass:</B> <INPUT TYPE= \"PASSWORD\" NAME= \"Pass\"><B
+R>\n";
    print "   <BR>\n";
    print "   <B>Name:</B> <INPUT TYPE= \"TEXT\" NAME= \"Name\"><BR>\n
+";
    print "   <B>URL:</B> <INPUT TYPE= \"TEXT\" NAME= \"URL\" SIZE=40>
+<BR>\n";
    
    print "   <INPUT TYPE= \"SUBMIT\" VALUE= \"Submit\">\n";
    print "  </FORM>\n";
    
    print " </BODY>\n";
    print "</HTML>\n";
}

####################

sub submit_data {
    # Get the data submitted from the form
    read(STDIN, my $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
    # Split the name-value pairs
    my @pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);
    my %FORM;
    foreach my $pair (@pairs) {
       my ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);

       # Remove plus signs and decode %-encoding
       $value =~ tr/+/ /;
       $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
       $value =~ s/<!--(.|\n)*-->//g;

       $FORM{$name} = $value;
    }

    ## Do something with the data
}

[download]

- Monolith

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Re: Retrieving Form Data
by Hero Zzyzzx (Curate) on Jul 15, 2001 at 04:32 UTC

    Oh my. I'd probably do that differently, especially by using CGI.pm for my form decoding. There's a million different reasons to CGI, the best is that it makes your job much easier!

    Here's your code, using CGI.pm:

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

my $q= CGI->new();

if (!$q->param('pass'){
 print_form($q); 
 } else {
 submit_data($q)
}

sub print_form{
 my $q =shift;
 print $q->header().
  $q->start_html().
  $start_form(-method=>'POST',
   -action=>'/cgi-bin/somepage.pl').
  $q->b('Pass:').
  $q->textfield(-name=>'pass').
  $q->br().
  $q->b('Name:').
  $q->textfield(-name=>'name').
  $q->br().
  $q->b('URL:').
  $q->textfield(-name=>'url').
  $q->submit().
  $q->end_form().
  $q->end_html();
}

sub submit_data{
 my $q=shift;
 # No need to go through all that form decoding stuff here. 
 # It's done automatically, and in the Right Way by CGI.pm.
 
 #do stuff with data.
}

    [download]

    Why is this better? Less typing, for one. Easier to read, too. Plus CGI.pm is very, very good for creating forms and simple HTML (it does a lot more than what I used it for here, obviously!). CGI.pm is also very good for creating tables programatically, e.g. from a database. You can even use CGI to auto-fill your forms, when you validate data from users.

    If you're going to be doing more complex HTML in your code, you should look into a templating system that lets you separate your perl scripts from your HTML. A really good one to learn is HTML::Template. It'll seem like a pain at first, but it's worth it in the long run.

    Some links:
    Use CGI or Die! from Ovid. Really good reading.
    Ovid's CGI tutorial.
    The CGI.pm docs from Lincoln Stein.
    HTML::Template Tutorial at PerlMonth.

    Update:The way I REALLY would have done this is with CGI::Application, which I think is like a state machine, and is HTML::Template's (non-)evil twin.

[reply]
[d/l]
      Yea, yea... I still need to get used to CGI. Thanks for the related links.
[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom