The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) specifies a software interface between a program (``CGI script'') and a web server (HTTPD). It is not specific to Perl, and has its own FAQs and tutorials, and usenet group, comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
The CGI specification is outlined in an informational RFC: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3875
Other relevant documentation listed in: http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
These Perl FAQs very selectively cover some CGI issues. However, Perl programmers are strongly advised to use the CGI.pm module, to take care of the details for them.
The similarity between CGI response headers (defined in the CGI specification) and HTTP response headers (defined in the HTTP specification, RFC2616) is intentional, but can sometimes be confusing.
The CGI specification defines two kinds of script: the ``Parsed Header'' script, and the ``Non Parsed Header'' (NPH) script. Check your server documentation to see what it supports. ``Parsed Header'' scripts are simpler in various respects. The CGI specification allows any of the usual newline representations in the CGI response (it's the server's job to create an accurate HTTP response based on it). So ``\n'' written in text mode is technically correct, and recommended. NPH scripts are more tricky: they must put out a complete and accurate set of HTTP transaction response headers; the HTTP specification calls for records to be terminated with carriage-return and line-feed, i.e ASCII \015\012 written in binary mode.
Using CGI.pm gives excellent platform independence, including EBCDIC systems. CGI.pm selects an appropriate newline representation ($CGI::CRLF) and sets binmode as appropriate.
http://www.perl.org/troubleshooting_CGI.html
If, after that, you can demonstrate that you've read the FAQs and that your problem isn't something simple that can be easily answered, you'll probably receive a courteous and useful reply to your question if you post it on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi (if it's something to do with HTTP or the CGI protocols). Questions that appear to be Perl questions but are really CGI ones that are posted to comp.lang.perl.misc are not so well received.
The useful FAQs, related documents, and troubleshooting guides are listed in the CGI Meta FAQ:
http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
use CGI::Carp;
warn "This is a complaint";
die "But this one is serious";
The following use of CGI::Carp also redirects errors to a file of your choice, placed in a BEGIN block to catch compile-time warnings as well:
BEGIN {
use CGI::Carp qw(carpout);
open(LOG, ">>/var/local/cgi-logs/mycgi-log")
or die "Unable to append to mycgi-log: $!\n";
carpout(*LOG);
}
You can even arrange for fatal errors to go back to the client browser, which is nice for your own debugging, but might confuse the end user.
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
die "Bad error here";
Even if the error happens before you get the HTTP header out, the module will try to take care of this to avoid the dreaded server 500 errors. Normal warnings still go out to the server error log (or wherever you've sent them with "carpout") with the application name and date stamp prepended.
Many folks attempt a simple-minded regular expression approach, like "s/<.*?>//g", but that fails in many cases because the tags may continue over line breaks, they may contain quoted angle-brackets, or HTML comment may be present. Plus, folks forget to convert entities---like "<" for example.
Here's one ``simple-minded'' approach, that works for most files:
#!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\1)*>//gs
If you want a more complete solution, see the 3-stage striphtml program in http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/striphtml.gz .
Here are some tricky cases that you should think about when picking a solution:
<IMG SRC = "foo.gif" ALT = "A > B">
<IMG SRC = "foo.gif"
ALT = "A > B">
<!-- <A comment> -->
<script>if (a<b && a>c)</script>
<# Just data #>
<![INCLUDE CDATA [ >>>>>>>>>>>> ]]>
If HTML comments include other tags, those solutions would also break on text like this:
<!-- This section commented out.
<B>You can't see me!</B>
-->
You can use URI::Find to extract URLs from an arbitrary text document.
Less complete solutions involving regular expressions can save you a lot of processing time if you know that the input is simple. One solution from Tom Christiansen runs 100 times faster than most module based approaches but only extracts URLs from anchors where the first attribute is HREF and there are no other attributes.
#!/usr/bin/perl -n00
# qxurl - tchrist@perl.com
print "$2\n" while m{
< \s*
A \s+ HREF \s* = \s* (["']) (.*?) \1
\s* >
}gsix;
See the section in the CGI.pm documentation on file uploads for code examples and details.
The CGI.pm module (which comes with Perl) has functions to create the HTML form widgets. See the CGI.pm documentation for more examples.
use CGI qw/:standard/;
print header,
start_html('Favorite Animals'),
start_form,
"What's your favorite animal? ",
popup_menu(
-name => 'animal',
-values => [ qw( Llama Alpaca Camel Ram ) ]
),
submit,
end_form,
end_html;
$html_code = `links -source $url`;
$text_data = `links -dump $url`;
The libwww-perl (LWP) modules from CPAN provide a more powerful way to do this. They don't require links, but like links, can still work through proxies:
# simplest version
use LWP::Simple;
$content = get($URL);
# or print HTML from a URL
use LWP::Simple;
getprint "http://www.linpro.no/lwp/";
# or print ASCII from HTML from a URL
# also need HTML-Tree package from CPAN
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::Parser;
use HTML::FormatText;
my ($html, $ascii);
$html = get("http://www.perl.com/");
defined $html
or die "Can't fetch HTML from http://www.perl.com/";
$ascii = HTML::FormatText->new->format(parse_html($html));
print $ascii;
If you're submitting values using the GET method, create a URL and encode the form using the "query_form" method:
use LWP::Simple;
use URI::URL;
my $url = url('http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod');
$url->query_form(module => 'DB_File', readme => 1);
$content = get($url);
If you're using the POST method, create your own user agent and encode the content appropriately.
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
use LWP::UserAgent;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
my $req = POST 'http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod',
[ module => 'DB_File', readme => 1 ];
$content = $ua->request($req)->as_string;
The best source of detailed information on URI encoding is RFC 2396. Basically, the following substitutions do it:
s/([^\w()'*~!.-])/sprintf '%%%02x', ord $1/eg; # encode
s/%([A-Fa-f\d]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # decode
s/%([[:xdigit:]]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # same thing
However, you should only apply them to individual URI components, not the entire URI, otherwise you'll lose information and generally mess things up. If that didn't explain it, don't worry. Just go read section 2 of the RFC, it's probably the best explanation there is.
RFC 2396 also contains a lot of other useful information, including a regexp for breaking any arbitrary URI into components (Appendix B).
Use of CGI.pm is strongly recommended. This example shows redirection with a complete URL. This redirection is handled by the web browser.
use CGI qw/:standard/;
my $url = 'http://www.cpan.org/';
print redirect($url);
This example shows a redirection with an absolute URLpath. This redirection is handled by the local web server.
my $url = '/CPAN/index.html';
print redirect($url);
But if coded directly, it could be as follows (the final ``\n'' is shown separately, for clarity), using either a complete URL or an absolute URLpath.
print "Location: $url\n"; # CGI response header
print "\n"; # end of headers
use HTTPD::UserAdmin ();
HTTPD::UserAdmin
->new(DB => "/foo/.htpasswd")
->add($username => $password);
http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
$/ = '';
$header = <MSG>;
$header =~ s/\n\s+/ /g; # merge continuation lines
%head = ( UNIX_FROM_LINE, split /^([-\w]+):\s*/m, $header );
That solution doesn't do well if, for example, you're trying to maintain all the Received lines. A more complete approach is to use the Mail::Header module from CPAN (part of the MailTools package).
Use the CGI.pm module that comes with Perl. It's quick, it's easy, and it actually does quite a bit of work to ensure things happen correctly. It handles GET, POST, and HEAD requests, multipart forms, multivalued fields, query string and message body combinations, and many other things you probably don't want to think about.
It doesn't get much easier: the CGI module automatically parses the input and makes each value available through the "param()" function.
use CGI qw(:standard);
my $total = param( 'price' ) + param( 'shipping' );
my @items = param( 'item' ); # multiple values, same field name
If you want an object-oriented approach, CGI.pm can do that too.
use CGI;
my $cgi = CGI->new();
my $total = $cgi->param( 'price' ) + $cgi->param( 'shipping' );
my @items = $cgi->param( 'item' );
You might also try CGI::Minimal which is a lightweight version of the same thing. Other CGI::* modules on CPAN might work better for you, too.
Many people try to write their own decoder (or copy one from another program) and then run into one of the many ``gotchas'' of the task. It's much easier and less hassle to use CGI.pm.
This isn't as simple a question as it sounds. There are two parts:
a) How do I verify that an email address is correctly formatted?
b) How do I verify that an email address targets a valid recipient?
Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a human on the other end to answer you, you cannot fully answer part b, but either the "Email::Valid" or the "RFC::RFC822::Address" module will do both part a and part b as far as you can in real-time.
If you want to just check part a to see that the address is valid according to the mail header standard with a simple regular expression, you can have problems, because there are deliverable addresses that aren't RFC-2822 (the latest mail header standard) compliant, and addresses that aren't deliverable which, are compliant. However, the following will match valid RFC-2822 addresses that do not have comments, folding whitespace, or any other obsolete or non-essential elements. This just matches the address itself:
my $atom = qr{[a-zA-Z0-9_!#\$\%&'*+/=?\^`{}~|\-]+};
my $dot_atom = qr{$atom(?:\.$atom)*};
my $quoted = qr{"(?:\\[^\r\n]|[^\\"])*"};
my $local = qr{(?:$dot_atom|$quoted)};
my $domain_lit = qr{\[(?:\\\S|[\x21-\x5a\x5e-\x7e])*\]};
my $domain = qr{(?:$dot_atom|$domain_lit)};
my $addr_spec = qr{$local\@$domain};
Just match an address against "/^${addr_spec}$/" to see if it follows the RFC2822 specification. However, because it is impossible to be sure that such a correctly formed address is actually the correct way to reach a particular person or even has a mailbox associated with it, you must be very careful about how you use this.
Our best advice for verifying a person's mail address is to have them enter their address twice, just as you normally do to change a password. This usually weeds out typos. If both versions match, send mail to that address with a personal message. If you get the message back and they've followed your directions, you can be reasonably assured that it's real.
A related strategy that's less open to forgery is to give them a PIN (personal ID number). Record the address and PIN (best that it be a random one) for later processing. In the mail you send, ask them to include the PIN in their reply. But if it bounces, or the message is included via a ``vacation'' script, it'll be there anyway. So it's best to ask them to mail back a slight alteration of the PIN, such as with the characters reversed, one added or subtracted to each digit, etc.
use MIME::Base64;
$decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
The MIME-Tools package (available from CPAN) supports extraction with decoding of BASE64 encoded attachments and content directly from email messages.
If the string to decode is short (less than 84 bytes long) a more direct approach is to use the unpack() function's ``u'' format after minor transliterations:
tr#A-Za-z0-9+/##cd; # remove non-base64 chars
tr#A-Za-z0-9+/# -_#; # convert to uuencoded format
$len = pack("c", 32 + 0.75*length); # compute length byte
print unpack("u", $len . $_); # uudecode and print
use Sys::Hostname;
$address = sprintf('%s@%s', scalar getpwuid($<), hostname);
Company policies on mail address can mean that this generates addresses that the company's mail system will not accept, so you should ask for users' mail addresses when this matters. Furthermore, not all systems on which Perl runs are so forthcoming with this information as is Unix.
The Mail::Util module from CPAN (part of the MailTools package) provides a mailaddress() function that tries to guess the mail address of the user. It makes a more intelligent guess than the code above, using information given when the module was installed, but it could still be incorrect. Again, the best way is often just to ask the user.
open(SENDMAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t -odq")
or die "Can't fork for sendmail: $!\n";
print SENDMAIL <<"EOF";
From: User Originating Mail <me\@host>
To: Final Destination <you\@otherhost>
Subject: A relevant subject line
Body of the message goes here after the blank line
in as many lines as you like.
EOF
close(SENDMAIL) or warn "sendmail didn't close nicely";
The -oi option prevents sendmail from interpreting a line consisting of a single dot as ``end of message''. The -t option says to use the headers to decide who to send the message to, and -odq says to put the message into the queue. This last option means your message won't be immediately delivered, so leave it out if you want immediate delivery.
Alternate, less convenient approaches include calling mail (sometimes called mailx) directly or simply opening up port 25 have having an intimate conversation between just you and the remote SMTP daemon, probably sendmail.
Or you might be able use the CPAN module Mail::Mailer:
use Mail::Mailer;
$mailer = Mail::Mailer->new();
$mailer->open({ From => $from_address,
To => $to_address,
Subject => $subject,
})
or die "Can't open: $!\n";
print $mailer $body;
$mailer->close();
The Mail::Internet module uses Net::SMTP which is less Unix-centric than Mail::Mailer, but less reliable. Avoid raw SMTP commands. There are many reasons to use a mail transport agent like sendmail. These include queuing, MX records, and security.
use MIME::Lite;
### Create a new multipart message:
$msg = MIME::Lite->new(
From =>'me@myhost.com',
To =>'you@yourhost.com',
Cc =>'some@other.com, some@more.com',
Subject =>'A message with 2 parts...',
Type =>'multipart/mixed'
);
### Add parts (each "attach" has same arguments as "new"):
$msg->attach(Type =>'TEXT',
Data =>"Here's the GIF file you wanted"
);
$msg->attach(Type =>'image/gif',
Path =>'aaa000123.gif',
Filename =>'logo.gif'
);
$text = $msg->as_string;
MIME::Lite also includes a method for sending these things.
$msg->send;
This defaults to using sendmail but can be customized to use SMTP via Net::SMTP.
#!/usr/bin/perl
my(@msgs, @sub);
my $msgno = -1;
$/ = ''; # paragraph reads
while (<>) {
if (/^From /m) {
/^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi;
$sub[++$msgno] = lc($1) || '';
}
$msgs[$msgno] .= $_;
}
for my $i (sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msgs)) {
print $msgs[$i];
}
Or more succinctly,
#!/usr/bin/perl -n00
# bysub2 - awkish sort-by-subject
BEGIN { $msgno = -1 }
$sub[++$msgno] = (/^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi)[0] if /^From/m;
$msg[$msgno] .= $_;
END { print @msg[ sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msg) ] }
The Net::Domain module, which is part of the standard distribution starting in perl5.7.3, can get you the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), the host name, or the domain name.
use Net::Domain qw(hostname hostfqdn hostdomain);
my $host = hostfqdn();
The "Sys::Hostname" module, included in the standard distribution since perl5.6, can also get the hostname.
use Sys::Hostname;
$host = hostname();
To get the IP address, you can use the "gethostbyname" built-in function to turn the name into a number. To turn that number into the dotted octet form (a.b.c.d) that most people expect, use the "inet_ntoa" function from the <Socket> module, which also comes with perl.
use Socket;
my $address = inet_ntoa(
scalar gethostbyname( $host || 'localhost' )
);
perl -MNews::NNTPClient
-e 'print News::NNTPClient->new->list("newsgroups")'
Use one of the RPC modules you can find on CPAN ( http://search.cpan.org/search?query=RPC&mode=all ).
Date: $Date: 2007-01-11 00:07:14 +0100 (Thu, 11 Jan 2007) $
See perlfaq for source control details and availability.
This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in this file are hereby placed into the public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit would be courteous but is not required.