New to CGI- An easy one 1

dgwilliams · Jul 18, 2003

Hi all i am very new to CGI and know a little perl.

I have a web page with a form that collects contacts name and address. Just the two fields. I have a button at the bottom submit. Can anyone tell me how to write a cgi script that when this submit button is pressed it sends the information to me via email.

c4n · Jul 18, 2003

I wrote you some simple code to do the job and added some comments to help you understand what is happening. Copy it, change settings for e-mail address, save in file "email.cgi", upload the file to your server (cgi-bin directory) in ASCII mod (not BINARY!) and CHMOD it to 755 (rwx-rx-rx).

Use such HTML code for the form:

<form action="cgi-bin/email.cgi" method="POST">
Your name: <input type="text" name="name"> 
Your e-mail: <input type="text" name="email"> 
<input type="submit" value="Submit this form">
</form>

Once you got it working you can change HTML code between qq~ and ~; so it will fit your site.

Hope this helps!

Perl code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Change the path above to the path to Perl on your server
# This one usually works

$your_email = 'you@email.com'; # Your e-mail address
$ subject = 'New contact'; # Subject of the e-mail sent to you
$mailprog = '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t'; # Path to mail software on server
# (ask your server administrator or read server documentation)
# This one usually works

# We use CGI.pm module to easily process the submitted data
use CGI;
$q=new CGI;

# This line of code will help us debugging the script
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

# Get the value of the "name" input field and store it in variable $name
$name=$q->param("name&quot

or error("Please enter your name&quot

;

# Get the value of the "email" input field and store it in variable $email
$email=$q->param("email&quot

or error("Please enter your e-mail address&quot

;

# Check if the e-mail is of type "something@something.com"
unless ($email =~ /([\w\-]+\@[\w\-]+\.[\w\-]+)/) {error("Please enter a valid e-mail address&quot

;}

# Open sendmail and write an e-mail
open(MAIL,"|$mailprog&quot

or error("Can't open e-mail program. Check your path!&quot

;
print MAIL "To: $your_email\n";
print MAIL "From: $name <$email>\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";
print MAIL qq~Hello

Someone has just submitted your form:

Name: $name
E-mail: $email

Bye!
~;
close(MAIL);

# Display the thank you page
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print qq~
<html>
<head>
<title>Thank you</title>
</head>
<body>
Thank you
Your data was submitted!
 
 
 
 
 
</body>
</html>
~;
exit;

sub error {
# If something went wrong display an error page
($problem) = @_;
# "$problem" will be replaced with the error message
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print qq~
<html>
<head>
<title>Error</title>
</head>
<body>
Error
$problem
 
 
 
 
 
</body>
</html>
~;
exit;
}

dgwilliams · Jul 18, 2003

That is great thanks for that code i really have learnt somthings from that. Thanks for your time.

Just two querys can u explain what you meant by: "Once you got it working you can change HTML code between qq~ and ~; so it will fit your site."

And Also if u have the time could u explain this section of the code to me:

# Open sendmail and write an e-mail
open(MAIL,"|$mailprog&quot

or error("Can't open e-mail program. Check your path!&quot

;
print MAIL "To: $your_email\n";
print MAIL "From: $name <$email>\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";
print MAIL qq~Hello

Does it open the customers email program and they write a message or is that what will appear in the email when i receive it?

c4n · Jul 18, 2003

You're welcome.

By changing the code between qq~ and ~; I meant this: you can edit the HTML code in this script so the pages displayed ("thank you" page and "error" page) will look same as your website. You can edit all the code between lines "print qq~" and "~;". Example below:

print qq~
<html>
<head>
<title>Thank you</title>
</head>
<body>
Thank you
Your data was submitted!
 
 
 
 
 
</body>
</html>
~;

you can for exaplme change it to
print qq~
<html>
<head>
<title>My own title</title>
</head>
<body>
Thank you
I have received your e-mail
 
<a href="

http://www.yourdomain.coM">Click

here to continue</a>
 
<img src="path/to/some/image.gif">
 
</body>
</html>
~;

The code you mentioned does this:
First line opens email program on your server (called "sendmail&quot

, not your visitors' e-mail client
open(MAIL,"|$mailprog&quot

or error("Can't open e-mail program. Check your path!&quot

;

These lines print the "To: ", "From: " and "Subject: " headers of the e-mail which will be sent to you. Variables ($your_email, $name ,...) will be replaced by the assigned values.
print MAIL "To: $your_email\n";
print MAIL "From: $name <$email>\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";

This prints the body of the e-mail (what you will see in your e-mail client):
print MAIL qq~Hello

Someone has just submitted your form:

Name: $name
E-mail: $email

Bye!
~;

and finally script closes the e-mail program:
close(MAIL);

Again, this is done on the server, your visitors will not see this.

dgwilliams · Jul 18, 2003

Thanks that is really helpfull

I can modify and build on this now, just the starting point i needed thank you.

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New to CGI- An easy one 1

dgwilliams

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