another cgi problem

[ailse]

Hi again,

I am in the process of converting a perl program to cgi so it can be run from a website instead of locally on my machine, and my question is about passing variables to the program - the code i have so far looks like this:

if (exists $HoA{$id}) {
     	print "$id has been located! Here are the associated values:\n";
	@id_array = split(/ /, $HoA{$id});
	
	foreach (@id_array) {
  	print "$_\n";
	}

	} 
	else {
      	print "This ID has not been found. Please enter another ID.\n"; 
   	}

so basically the user enters an ID and this is looked up as the key in a hash of arrays, if it is found the associated array is returned. the user types this ID into a form, and my problem is how do I pass this variable as $ID to the above code? I am using cgi.pm,

cheers for any advice

 

[duncdude]

if you use GET then it will become appended to the URL - i.e.

http://www.somewebsite.com

[red]?ID=12345[/red] - this is $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'}

If you use POST then it will be held in $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'} - i.e.

read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
print "$buffer\n\n";

Kind Regards
Duncan

 

[ailse]

cheers for that - here's the code i'm using now. It doesn't write the results out, should I be modifying it further?

my $id = param('id');

if (exists $HoA{$id}) {
         print "$id has been located! Here are the associated values:\n";
    @id_array = split(/ /, $HoA{$id});
    
    foreach (@id_array) {
      print "$_\n";
    }

    } 
    else {
          print "This ID has not been found. Please enter another ID.\n"; 
       }

where the value of 'id' has come from the user input to a form... is there something more I need for this to work?

thanks

 

[duncdude]

are you certain values exist for $HoA{?}?

... or it could be a case mismatch:- ID / id


Kind Regards
Duncan

 

[ailse]

no, i checked that and to test the script I am only entering ID values that I know are in the HoA... I just wonder if there's any special syntax I need in the cgi program to print statements? I am just using the regular "print" but do I need something different since I am printing something that will be displayed in a browser?

sorry if that doesn't make much sense but I am very new to CGI.pm and trying to get my head round it!

cheers

 

[duncdude]

have you chomped the user input to remove the CR/LF?


Kind Regards
Duncan

 

[ailse]

not too sure what you mean... here's the code I have so far:

$query = new CGI;

print $query -> header;

print $query -> start_html (-title => 'Your Results');

print $query -> h1({-align=>center}, $query->font({-color=>red}, 'Your Results'));


print "The associated array is:";

$id = param('id');

if (exists $HoA{$id}) {
     	print "$id has been located! Here are the associated values:\n";
	@array = split(/ /, $HoA{$id});
	
	foreach (@array) {
  	print "$_\n";
	}

	} 
	else {
      	print "This ID has not been found. Please enter another ID.\n"; 
   	}

and i'm getting the user input of the id from the html as follows:

<input type="text" name="id" size="30" maxlength="50">

if anyone can shed some light on this i'd be very grateful! i know there isn't a problem with creating the hash of arrays or looking up keys as i first made this as a regular perl prog and it works fine... just need it to work on the web!!

thanks

 

[ailse]

ok all sorted now! found my mistake!