Basic CGI Question (Moved from Q&A)

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

This question was moved from Categorized Questions and Answers
Please do not vote for this node. It will affect the wrong user. Thank You -- Q&AEditors

Ok to start off i would like to say IM NEW TO PERL. so dont laugh at my coding...

#!/usr/bin/perl

#----------------------------------------------------------
#Umm in trying this, lets see if it works...<BR>
#Trying it, doubt it works..<BR>
#----------------------------------------------------------

my $in;
if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq "GET") {
    $in = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
} else {
    $in = <STDIN>;
}

@Texts = ("text1","text2","text3","text4","text5");

print <<ENDhdr;
print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n";
print "<html><HEAD><TITLE>Thing...</title></head>";
print "<body><H1>Thing</h1>";
print "<input type=text value=\"$Texts[0]\">\n";
print "<input type=text value=\"$Texts[1]\">\n";
print "<input type=text value=\"$Texts[2]\">\n";
print "<input type=text value=\"$Texts[3]\">\n";
print "<input type=text value=\"$Texts[4]\">\n";
print "<input type=\"submit\" value=\"Submit\" onclick=\"?alpha\">";
ENDhdr

sub alpha {

sort(@Texts)
@Texts = yay;
print "$yay";
}
[download]

Russ
Brainbench 'Most Valuable Professional' for Perl

Comment on Basic CGI Question (Moved from Q&A) Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: Basic CGI Question (Moved from Q&A) by ColtsFoot (Chaplain) on Aug 26, 2000 at 10:55 UTC
The problem that you are encountering is due to the way that you are trying to print the HTML. The line:- `print <<ENDhdr;` is going to print everything to STDOUT until it finds a line the starts with the matching ENDhdr. So you do not require the print statements on each of the lines. Another point is that you will require the <FORM>...</FORM> tag around the input tags. Things can be made MUCH easier if you were to use the CGI.pm module eg. `#!/usr/bin/perl # use CGI; $page = new CGI; my $in; if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq "GET") { $in = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'}; } else { $in = <STDIN>; } @Texts = ("text1","text2","text3","text4","text5"); print $page->header(); # This outputs the Content-Type stuff print $page->start_html(); print $page->startform; print <<ENDhdr; ..... ..... ENDhdr print $page->endform(); print $page->end_html();` [download] Try using perldoc CGI to get more info Hope this is of some help	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Basic CGI Question (Moved from Q&A) by chromatic (Archbishop) on Aug 26, 2000 at 20:23 UTC
Definitely look into CGI as ColtsFoot suggests. It will make your life so much easier (after you learn the basics, which shouldn't take too long). Here's a revised start to your script, which uses CGI.pm to get the query string (much, much easier and more robust): `#!/usr/bin/perl -wT use strict; use CGI; my $page = new CGI; my $in = $page->param('alpha');` [download] And so forth. I'm not sure what you intend to do with the form or the alpha subroutine. Perhaps you could reply and shed more light on it.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Basic CGI Question (Moved from Q&A) by ar0n (Priest) on Aug 26, 2000 at 21:58 UTC
Since you're starting out and all, here's an easier way to populate `@Texts`: `@Texts = qw(text1 text2 text3 text4 text5);` [download] Which just tells perl to treat whatever's in `qw(...)` as a whitespace delimited list. Nifty. -- ar0n \|\| Just Another Perl Joe	[reply] [d/l] [select]


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