regular expression within forms

[craazycanuck]

Hello everyone

I have a form with two text inputs....the difficulty I am running into is...I need to parse the spaces between words from the first text input but leave the spaces between words from the second text input.I am sure I need to adjust my regular expression but unclear as to how..Sorry for such a basic question .....just learning.

Ty in advance
Dave

whichmethod = $ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'};
if($whichmethod eq "GET&quot{
$forminfo = $ENV{"QUERY_STRING"};
}else
{
$forminfo = <STDIN>;
}

@key_value_pairs = split(/&/,$forminfo);
foreach $pair (@key_value_pairs){
($key,$value) = split(/=/,$pair);
$value =~ s/\+//g;
$value =~ s/%([0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F])/pack(&quot;C&quot;, hex($1))/eg;
$FORM_DATA{$key} = $value;
}

}

 

[goBoating]

# The convention is to let the %FORM_DATA hash contain
# the text that was entered by the user. So, replace
# the '+'s in the URI string with spaces.


@key_value_pairs = split(/&/,$forminfo);
foreach $pair (@key_value_pairs)
{
($key,$value) = split(/=/,$pair);
[red]$value =~ s/\+/ /g;[/red]
$value =~ s/%([0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F])/pack(&quot;C&quot;, hex($1))/eg;
$FORM_DATA{$key} = $value;
}

# Then, handle each input key and value according to
# your rules for that value.

# Get a list from the first space delimited input.
@words_from_first_input = split(/ /,$FORM_DATA{'first_input_field_name'});

# Get the second text input as a string
$second_input = $FORM_DATA{'second_input_field_name'};


HTH


keep the rudder amid ship and beware the odd typo

 

[vcherubini]

I am surprised goBoating didn't say this, cause I know he is a big advocate of CGI.pm, but I think that CGI.pm is a lot better for beginners, and for use in general.

Just my $0.02.

-Vic vic cherubini
krs-one@cnunited.com

http://www.cnunited.com

====
Knows: Perl, HTML, JavScript, C/C++, PHP, Flash
====

 

[goBoating]

Vic, I agree.....
You can catch and parse the incoming uri string pretty quickly/easily..
Maybe I tried to answer the question to narrowly at first .... thanks for the follow up...

#!perl
use CGI;
my $cgi_object = new CGI;
# There, I just parsed the uri string
# now the fields are available to play with.....
$string = $cgi-object->param('field_name');

HTH

I have heard arguments that the CGI module is a lot to pull in if you don't need to. However, I think that while it uses a few more CPU cycles and more RAM, the ease of use so dramatically reduces the number of my brain cycles that it is well worth the system overhead. I find that carbon based CPU cycles are far more expensive than silicon based CPU cycles. ;-)


keep the rudder amid ship and beware the odd typo

 

[sophisticate]

There really isn't much system overhead if you only import the functions/sets of functions that you need instead of the entire module. eg.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI qw/:cgi/;
or
use CGI qw/param header start_html end_html/;

brendanc@icehouse.net

http://www.witheredpipedream.com

 

[craazycanuck]

Sorry guys ..nothing I try works .Is there any way I can assign a variable to one text fields then use the regular expression on this variable.

Ty for your patience
Dave

 

[derekpc]

Actually go boating just showed you to do just that.

[tt]
#!perl
use CGI;
my $cgi_object = new CGI;
# There, I just parsed the uri string
# now the fields are available to play with.....
$string = $cgi-object->param('field_name');
[/tt]

The bolded line is assigning the value of the form field &quot;field_name&quot; to the variable named &quot;$string&quot;. You can then manipulate $string to your heart's content. If that was the field that you wish to strip the spaces from you could follow up the assignment with.
[tt]$string =~ s/ //g[/tt];

Derek

 

[craazycanuck]

Thank you for your help guys.... but I know zero about CGI.pm. If I could bother you to check the following code I would be extremely gratefull
Thank you in advance
Dave

$whichmethod = $ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'};
if($whichmethod eq &quot;GET&quot{
$forminfo = $ENV{&quot;QUERY_STRING&quot;};
}else
{
$forminfo = <STDIN>;
}
$name =$FORM_DATA{'favoriteurl'};
@key_value_pairs = split(/&/,$forminfo);
foreach $pair (@key_value_pairs){
($key,$value) = split(/=/,$pair);
$value =~ s/\+/ /g;
$value =~ s/%([0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F])/pack(&quot;C&quot;, hex($1))/eg;
if ($name)
{$value =~ s/\+//g;}
$FORM_DATA{$key} = $value;
}

}

 

[derekpc]

Dave,

I just noticed one significant error in your code which will cause errors. You left he dollar sign off whichmethod when you set it.
Should read [tt]$whichmethod = $ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'};[/tt].

To be honest though, I have never bothered using any of the routines for manually parsing the incoming form because CGI.pm does it for me automatically, so I only have to worry about what I need to do with the form field values and not how to put them into a form that the script can use. It is really worth the time to give the CGI.pm documents (

http://www.perldoc.com/cpan/CGI.html)

or (assuming that your perl implementation is your path) issue the command [tt]perldoc CGI[/tt] to read the docs specific to your version and get a feel for it, it will more than earn you back the time you save reading it.
Here is an explanation of how to do what I think you want to do with CGI.pm, the code in red is code using CGI.pm and blue is the code from your example that it makes unnecessary. I will assume that your form fields are named text1 and text2 and you want to strip the spaces from text1.
[tt]

#!perl -w
use strict;
use CGI;
my $cgi_object = new CGI; #this one line
# brings in all the form data and sets up a
# hash containing all the form field names and
# values which are accessible through param().
# CGI.pm recognizes whether the form action
# was GET or POST so you don't have to test for it.


whichmethod = $ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'};
if($whichmethod eq &quot;GET&quot{
$forminfo = $ENV{&quot;QUERY_STRING&quot;};
}else
{
$forminfo = <STDIN>;
}
@key_value_pairs = split(/&/,$forminfo);
foreach $pair (@key_value_pairs){
    ($key,$value) = split(/=/,$pair);
    $value =~ s/\+//g; 
    $value =~ s/%([0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F])/pack(&quot;C&quot;, hex($1))/eg;
    $FORM_DATA{$key} = $value;
}
# basically all of the above is negated using CGI.pm


# now the fields are available to play with
# so I will set up script variables to hold
# the values of text1 and text2
my $text1 = $cgi_object->param('text1');
my $text2 = $cgi_object->param('text2');
# now, strip the spaces from the value in text1
$text1 =~ s/ //g;
# print the values back out to your web page to see what it looks like

print $cgi_object->header;
print $cgi_object->start_html(-'title'=>&quot;My Form Results&quot;
print $cgi_object->p(&quot;\$text1 contains the following value: $text1&quot;
print $cgi_object->p(&quot;\$text2 contains the following value: $text2&quot;
print $cgi_object->end_html;

[tt]

Here is a simple html page that I made to test this out:
[tt]
<html>
<head>
<title>Test the form response</head>
<body bgcolor=&quot;white&quot;>
<h2>Just want to test out field value processing.</h2>
<form action=&quot;/cgi-bin/strip_space.pl&quot; method=&quot;GET&quot;>
<p>Enter a value in this field: <input type=&quot;text&quot; name=&quot;text1&quot; length=&quot;25&quot;></p>
<p>Enter a value in this field: <input type=&quot;text&quot; name=&quot;text2&quot; length=&quot;25&quot;></p>
<input type=&quot;submit&quot; value=&quot;Do It&quot;><input type=&quot;reset&quot; value=&quot;Clear the form&quot;>
</body>
</html>
[/tt]

The output I get after entering &quot;This is a test&quot; into each field and submitting the form is as follows:
[tt]
$text1 contains the following value: Thisisatest
$text2 contains the following value: This is a test
[/tt]

Derek