Monks,

I have a CGI program that is used to produce custom reports from our firewall logs. These reports sometimes take 30-60 min to produce. I configured Apache so the browser won't timeout while creating the report. This program also uses some system utilities to create the report so it's not all Perl based. I would like a way to let the user know the status of the report being generated. I have read Merlyn's Webtechnique article, but I'm having a hard time trying to implement this into my program. I was thinking about trying to guess how long the script will take from the users values and keep refreshing this number. Does anyone have any suggestions? Here is a summary of the action script:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
 
# 'taint' in the import list is currently a no-op.  See the documentat
+ion
use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';
use CGI::Safe qw/:standard taint/;
use Mail::Sender;
 
my $summary = param( 'summary' ) || '';
my $num_sites = param( 'websites' ) || '';
my $ip = param( 'ip' ) || '';

...

my (@days,$string,$result,$sender,$src,$direct);
 
my $dir = "/var/tmp";
my $header = "$dir/header";
my $output = "$dir/output";
 
# Delete the output file if it exist
unlink $output;
 
# Run the subroutines
&check_email();
&display_page();
 
# Delete the output file once we are done
unlink $output;
 
exit;
 
sub check_email {
  
   # Make sure the user enters a company email address.

   if ($email =~ /([.\w]+)(\@acme+\.com$)/) {
    &do_work();
   } else {
     die "$email is not a valid email address. Please try again.\n";
   }
}
 
 
sub do_work {
 
   # Copy the 1st line from the log files which is necessary for fwlog
+sum
 
   open (IN,"$header") or die "can't open file $header: $!";
   open (OUT,">$output") or die "can't open file $output: $!";
   while (<IN>) {
   print OUT $_;
   }
 
   # Add each day to an array
   $string = "$month1" . "$year";
   @days = ($day1 .. $day2);
   @days = map {$_ .= "$string"} @days; # add the month and year to ea
+ch day
 
   if ($summary eq 'yes') {
    if ($direction eq 'inbound') {
      ...
     } 
    }
    elsif ($direction eq 'outbound') {
     ....
     }
   }
   elsif ($summary eq 'no') {
      ...    
   }
   elsif ($direction eq 'outbound') {
     ...
   }
   close (IN);
   close (OUT);
 
   my $fwlogsum = "/usr/local/bin/fwlogsum -ra -w -sc -bo -T -l $outpu
+t -o /exported/web-usage/$report.html";
   my $fwlogsum_sum = "/usr/local/bin/fwlogsum -ra -w -sc -bo -T -S -P
+ $num_sites -l $output -o /exported/web-usage/$report.html";
   my $fwlogsum_sum_dns = "/usr/local/bin/fwlogsum -ra -w -sc -bo -C -
+T -R -S -P $num_sites -l $output -o /exported/web-usage/$report.html"
+;
   my $fwlogsum_dns = "/usr/local/bin/fwlogsum -ra -w -sc -bo -C -T -R
+ -l $output -o /exported/web-usage/$report.html";
 
   if ($dns eq 'yes' && $summary eq 'yes') {
      $result = `$fwlogsum_sum_dns`;
   } elsif ($dns eq 'yes' && $summary eq 'no'){
      $result = `$fwlogsum_dns`;
   } elsif ($dns eq 'no' && $summary eq 'yes'){
      $result = `$fwlogsum_sum`;
   } else {
      $result = `$fwlogsum`;
   } #end else
 
   mail();
 
}
 
sub mail {
   ...
 
} 
 
sub display_page {
   my $message = shift;
   print
     header,
     start_html( "-title" => "Results Page"),
     p(" "),
     p( strong("Mail Sent Ok") ),
     end_html;
}
[download]

Thanks,
Dru
Another satisfied monk.