http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=84157

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

Fellow monks,

I encountered a strange problem while writing a CGI script for a site I'm developing. Here's the scoop: 

print header,

  start_html (-title => 'Welcome to 0.0.0.0!',
              Link ({-rel => 'stylesheet', type => 'text/css', href =>
+ 'style.css'}),
              base ({-href => 'http://0.0.0.0/cgi-bin/dir/'}),
             ),

  body ({-vlink => 'black'})

[download]

The preceeding causes the proceeding: 

Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html
        PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.0//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/xhtml-basic10.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-US"><head><title>T
+he POSIX Network</title>
</head><body <link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /
+>="&lt;base href=&quot;http://skeptical.no-ip.com/cgi-bin/posixnet/&q
+uot; /&gt;"><body vlink="black" />,

[download]

As you can see, it appears as the opening body tag is not being closed, and the tag delimters are converted into their counter-equivalent (whatever that means) [&lt;, &gt;, &quot;]

Any explanation of what is going on will be helpful.

Regards,
Dusk

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: CGI.pm idiosyncrasy?
by Trimbach (Curate) on May 30, 2001 at 07:56 UTC
    The "base" and "vlink" tags both belong in the "start_html" method when you're using CGI.pm. There is no "body" function per se in CGI.pm, so by typing it the module is assuming you know what you're doing and pretends it's a valid tag. Your "body" function doesn't "enclose" anything, so CGI.pm makes the perfectly valid guess that "body" is a self-closing tag like "break " and puts the closing slash within the tag per XHTML 1.0 guidelines. You're getting similar problems with "base" which should also be an attribute of start_html, and not it's own function/method.

    Try this instead: (untested) 

    
print header,

  start_html (-title => 'Welcome to 0.0.0.0!',
              Link ({-rel => 'stylesheet', type => 'text/css', href =>
+ 'style.css'}), 
  base => 'http://0.0.0.0/cgi-bin/dir/', 
  vlink => "Black");

    [download]
    For more info check out the "start_html" docs in the CGI.pm POD.

    Gary Blackburn
    Trained Killer

[reply]
[d/l]
Re: CGI.pm idiosyncrasy?
by Zaxo (Archbishop) on May 30, 2001 at 09:35 UTC
    <it>start_html({ ...</it> 
        -head=>[Link({{-rel => 'stylesheet',
            type => 'text/css',
            href => 'style.css'}),],

    [download]

    To distribute the -head key the usual ref convention of CGI.pm applies

    After Compline
    Zaxo

[reply]
[d/l]
      Changing   body ({-vlink => 'black'}) to   body ({-vlink => 'black'}, '') will solve one of the remaining problems.
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: CGI.pm idiosyncrasy?
by hackmare (Pilgrim) on May 30, 2001 at 16:49 UTC
    You have a misplaced body tag which is nonsensical in the start_html context Try this program (note that it doesnt send xhtml).

    (Tested on solaris with perl5.0503)

    Script: 
    
#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI;
use strict;
my $p = new CGI;
print $p->header;
print $p->start_html(-title=>'Welcome to 0.0.0.0!',
                     -author=>'ronan@hackmare.com',
                     -base=>{href => 'http://0.0.0.0/cgi-bin/dir/'},
                     -meta=>{'keywords'=>'pharoah secret mummy',
                               'copyright'=>'Hackmarish Things Happening'},
                     -style=>{'src'=>'/styles/style1.css'},
		     -dtd=>1,
                     -BGCOLOR=>'blue',
		     -vlink => 'black');
print $p->p('Is this what you want?');
print $p->end_html;

    Returns: 
    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Welcome to 0.0.0.0!</TITLE>
<LINK REV=MADE HREF="mailto:ronan%40hackmare.com">
<BASE HREF="http://localhost/perlmonk.pl">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="pharoah secret mummy">
<META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="Hackmarish Things Happening">
<LINK REL="stylesheet" HREF="/styles/style1.css">
</HEAD><BODY BGCOLOR="blue" VLINK="black"><P>Is this what you want?</P></BODY></HTML>

    This code was adapted from the CGI.pm html POD
    --hackmare
[reply]

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