html form, action pointing to a subroutine? 1

[martinasv]

Is it possible to write HTML form in perl so that the action points to a subroutine in the same script?

E.g.

print "<form action=\"do_something()\">";

where do_something is a subroutine?

 

[Rieekan]

I'm not sure I understand what you're looking for. If you want to run a subroutine to determine the end result action text when your HTML form is printed, then sure.

sub do_something() {
#code here
}

my $action = do_something();

print qq(<form action="$action">);

If you mean to have the form tag to literally be 'do_something()', then it's possible, but only if that routine was loaded into the HTML page and the user can run PerlScript from their computer.

Since HTML is not a "always connected" solution, you wouldn't be able to submit form data directly into a script. The Perl script would have run on the server, and sent the output to the user's browser and ended the connection. When a user submits a form, a completely new request comes into the web server and is processed. Only by using technology such as cookies would you know that it's the same person returning.

- George

 

[martinasv]

Tnx!

The first option is what I wanted.

But I'm new to all these stuff, so I'm constantly posting questions on this forum.

 

[KevinADC]

you can do this with a hash table and references:

<form action="myscript.pl">
<input type=hidden name=com value=[b]3[/b]>
<input type=text name=qty>
<input type=submit>
</form>

in the script:

my %coms = (
  1 => \&foo,
  2 => \&bar,
  [b]3[/b] => \&order
);

my $command = param('com') || 0;
my $qty = param('qty') || 0;
$coms{$command}->($qty);

sub order {
   my $parameter = shift
   blah blah
}

 

[icrf]

If you want to call a perl function on the server from javascript on the client, then that's pretty much what the SAJAX library was built for. There are Perl bindings, so excuse the PHP example:

http://www.modernmethod.com/sajax/sajax-0.12/php/example_multiply.php.txt

- Andrew
Text::Highlight - A language-neutral syntax highlighting module in Perl
also on SourceForge including demo

 

[Kirsle]

Something close to what he originally wanted is to just use a JavaScript function.

<script>
function do_something() {
   window.alert ('doing something?');
   return true;
}
</script>

<!-- Set an onSubmit function in your form -->
<form onSubmit="do_something()" action="script.pl">
<!-- form contents -->

So when the form is submitted, the JavaScript function do_something() is called just before submitting. If the function returns true, the form is passed on to the action (script.pl). If the function returns false, the submit is canceled (you could put a form validator to only submit the form if they filled out a text field or something)