Help passing parameters from HTML to Perl

[tlogan]

Hello all! I would appreciate any help with the following problem.

I have a Perl script to retrieve data and send it back to an HTML page. If I run the script from the browser, it works perfectly:

http://www.swingshiftdanceband.com/cgi-bin/get_pp_data.pl?category=1

However, I can't get it to run from an HTML page, as in:

<!--#exec cgi=&quot;/cgi-bin/get_pp_data.pl?category=1&quot;-->

error log only shows:

&quot; invalid CGI ref &quot;/cgi-bin/get_pp_data.pl?category=1&quot; &quot;


I've been searching both this CGI forum and the perl forum. I found and tried the <IFRAME>...</IFRAME> trick and it works, but that returns data in a frame and since I don't know how much data will be returned, it gets really cumbersome, not to mention ugly if I use scroll=yes.

Anyone have any ideas? You can use:

http://www.swingshiftdanceband.com/test_places_we_played.shtml

to see what I'm ultimately trying to do.


Thanks,
Tom
(the man without a snappy moniker)

 

[danielhozac]

From Apache's documentation for SSI, &quot;Including the results of a CGI program&quot;:
Including the results of a CGI program
This is one of the more common uses of SSI - to output the results of a CGI program, such as everybody's favorite, a &quot;hit counter.&quot;
<!--#include virtual=&quot;/cgi-bin/counter.pl&quot; -->

If not, it might be because you have a IncludesNOEXEC in your Options directive.

//Daniel

 

[tlogan]

Thanks D!!!

The <!--#include virtual....--> seems to have done the trick. I don't know how I missed that one. I guess because everything else I've seen says to use <!--#exec cgi...--> and that's how I've done all of my other perl scripts on the site and they work fine, although none of those need a prarameter passed to them.

It would be interesting to know any other differences between the two. Anyone?

Thanks,
Tom
(the man without a snappy moniker)

 

[danielhozac]

Copied from BNB:
Exec scripts do not inherit all that great CGI Server/Client information that Virtual does.

Virtual scripts must be in a directory from which you can run CGI scripts.

//Daniel