CGI.pm - a Perl5 CGI Library
AS OF 10 FEBRUARY 2005 (CGI.pm VERSION 3.06) THIS DOCUMENT IS NO
LONGER BEING MAINTAINED. PLEASE CONSULT THE CGI POD DOCUMENTATION
USING "perldoc CGI"
Abstract
This perl 5 library uses objects to create Web
fill-out forms on the fly and to parse their contents. It provides a
simple interface for parsing and interpreting query strings passed to
CGI scripts. However, it also offers a rich set of functions for
creating fill-out forms. Instead of remembering the syntax for HTML
form elements, you just make a series of perl function calls. An
important fringe benefit of this is that the value of the previous
query is used to initialize the form, so that the state of the form is
preserved from invocation to invocation.
Everything is done through a ``CGI'' object. When you create one
of these objects it examines the environment for a query string,
parses it, and stores the results. You can then ask the CGI object to
return or modify the query values. CGI objects handle POST and GET
methods correctly, and correctly distinguish between scripts called
from <ISINDEX> documents and form-based documents. In fact you
can debug your script from the command line without worrying about
setting up environment variables.
A script to create a fill-out form that remembers its state each
time it's invoked is very easy to write with CGI.pm:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI qw(:standard);
print header;
print start_html('A Simple Example'),
h1('A Simple Example'),
start_form,
"What's your name? ",textfield('name'),
p,
"What's the combination?",
p,
checkbox_group(-name=>'words',
-values=>['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
-defaults=>['eenie','minie']),
p,
"What's your favorite color? ",
popup_menu(-name=>'color',
-values=>['red','green','blue','chartreuse']),
p,
submit,
end_form,
hr;
if (param()) {
print
"Your name is",em(param('name')),
p,
"The keywords are: ",em(join(", ",param('words'))),
p,
"Your favorite color is ",em(param('color')),
hr;
}
print end_html;
Select this link to try the script
More scripting examples
Source code
examples from The Official Guide to CGI.pm
The current version of the software can always be downloaded from the
master copy of this document maintained at http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/CGI/.
This package requires perl 5.004 or higher. Earlier versions of Perl
may work, but CGI.pm has not been tested with them. If you're really
stuck, edit the source code to remove the line that says "require
5.004", but don't be surprised if you run into problems.
If you are using a Unix system, you should have perl do the
installation for you. Move to the directory containing CGI.pm and
type the following commands:
% perl Makefile.PL
% make
% make install
You may need to be root to do the last step.
This will create two new files in your Perl library. CGI.pm is the
main library file. Carp.pm (in the subdirectory "CGI") contains
some optional utility
routines for writing nicely formatted error messages into your
server logs. See the Carp.pm man page for more details.
If you get error messages when you try to install,
then you are either:
- Running a Windows NT or Macintosh port of Perl that
doesn't have make or the MakeMaker program built into it.
- Have an old version of Perl. Upgrade to 5.004 or higher.
In the former case don't panic. Here's a recipe that will work
(commands are given in MS-DOS/Windows form):
> cd CGI.pm-2.73
> copy CGI.pm C:\Perl\lib
> mkdir C:\Perl\lib\CGI
> copy CGI\*.pm C:\Perl\lib\CGI
Modify this recipe if your Perl library has a different location.
For Macintosh users, just drag the file named CGI.pm into the folder
where your other Perl .pm files are stored. Also drag the subfolder
named "CGI".
If you do not have sufficient privileges to install into
/usr/local/lib/perl5, you can still use CGI.pm. Modify the
installation recipe as follows:
% perl Makefile.PL INSTALLDIRS=site INSTALLSITELIB=/home/your/private/dir
% make
% make install
Replace /home/your/private/dir with the full path to the
directory you want the library placed in. Now preface your CGI
scripts with a preamble something like the following:
use lib '/home/your/private/dir';
use CGI;
Be sure to replace /home/your/private/dir with the true location of
CGI.pm.
Notes on using CGI.pm in NT and other non-Unix platforms
CGI.pm can be used in two distinct modes called
function-oriented and object-oriented. In
the function-oriented mode, you first import CGI functions into your
script's namespace, then call these functions directly. A simple
function-oriented script looks like this:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI qw/:standard/;
print header(),
start_html(-title=>'Wow!'),
h1('Wow!'),
'Look Ma, no hands!',
end_html();
The use operator loads the CGI.pm definitions and imports
the ":standard" set of function definitions. We then make calls to
various functions such as header(), to generate the HTTP
header, start_html(), to produce the top part of an HTML
document, h1() to produce a level one header, and so
forth.
In addition to the standard set, there are many optional sets of less
frequently used CGI functions. See Importing CGI
Methods for full details.
In the object-oriented mode, you use CGI; without
specifying any functions or function sets to import. In this case,
you communicate with CGI.pm via a CGI object. The object is created
by a call to CGI::new() and encapsulates all the state
information about the current CGI transaction, such as values of the
CGI parameters passed to your script. Although more verbose, this
coding style has the advantage of allowing you to create multiple CGI
objects, save their state to disk or to a database, and otherwise
manipulate them to achieve neat effects.
The same script written using the object-oriented style looks like
this:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI;
$q = new CGI;
print $q->header(),
$q->start_html(-title=>'Wow!'),
$q->h1('Wow!'),
'Look Ma, no hands!',
$q->end_html();
The object-oriented mode also has the advantage of consuming somewhat
less memory than the function-oriented coding style. This may be of
value to users of persistent Perl interpreters such as mod_perl.
Many of the code examples below show the object-oriented coding
style. Mentally translate them into the function-oriented style if
you prefer.
The most basic use of CGI.pm is to get at the query parameters
submitted to your script. To create a new CGI object that
contains the parameters passed to your script, put the following
at the top of your perl CGI programs:
use CGI;
$query = new CGI;
In the object-oriented world of Perl 5, this code calls the new()
method of the CGI class and stores a new CGI object into the variable
named $query. The new() method does all the dirty work of parsing
the script parameters and environment variables and stores its results
in the new object. You'll now make method calls with this object to
get at the parameters, generate form elements, and do other useful things.
An alternative form of the new() method allows you to read
script parameters from a previously-opened file handle:
$query = new CGI(FILEHANDLE)
The filehandle can contain a URL-encoded query string, or can be a
series of newline delimited TAG=VALUE pairs. This is compatible with
the save() method. This lets you save the state of a CGI script to a
file and reload it later. It's also possible to save the contents of
several query objects to the same file, either within a single script
or over a period of time. You can then reload the multiple records
into an array of query objects with something like this:
open (IN,"test.in") || die;
while (!eof(IN)) {
my $q = new CGI(IN);
push(@queries,$q);
}
You can make simple databases this way, or create a guestbook. If
you're a Perl purist, you can pass a reference to the filehandle glob
instead of the filehandle name. This is the "official" way to pass
filehandles in Perl5:
my $q = new CGI(\*IN);
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you're not a Perl
purist and you needn't worry about it.)
If you are using the function-oriented interface and want to
initialize CGI state from a file handle, the way to do this is with
restore_parameters(). This will (re)initialize the
default CGI object from the indicated file handle.
open (IN,"test.in") || die;
restore_parameters(IN);
close IN;
You can initialize a CGI object from an associative-array reference.
Values can be either single- or multivalued:
$query = new CGI({'dinosaur'=>'barney',
'song'=>'I love you',
'friends'=>[qw/Jessica George Nancy/]});
You can initialize a CGI object by passing a URL-style query string to
the new() method like this:
$query = new CGI('dinosaur=barney&color=purple');
Or you can clone a CGI object from an existing one. The parameter
lists of the clone will be identical, but other fields, such as
autoescaping, are not:
$old_query = new CGI;
$new_query = new CGI($old_query);
This form also allows you to create a CGI object that is initially empty:
$empty_query = new CGI('');
If you are using mod_perl, you can initialize a CGI object at any
stage of the request by passing the request object to CGI->new:
$q = CGI->new($r);
To do this with the function-oriented interface, set
Apache->request($r) before calling the first CGI function.
Finally, you can pass code reference to new() in order to install an
upload_hook function that will be called regularly while a long file
is being uploaded. See Creating a File Upload Field
for details.
See advanced techniques for more information.
@keywords = $query->keywords
If the script was invoked as the result of an <ISINDEX> search, the
parsed keywords can be obtained with the keywords() method. This method
will return the keywords as a perl array.
@names = $query->param
If the script was invoked with a
parameter list
(e.g. "name1=value1&name2=value2&name3=value3"), the param()
method will return the parameter names as a list. For backwards
compatibility if the script was invoked as an <ISINDEX> script
and contains a string without ampersands (e.g. "value1+value2+value3")
, there will be a single parameter named "keywords" containing the
"+"-delimited keywords.
@values = $query->param('foo');
-or-
$value = $query->param('foo');
Pass the param() method a single argument to fetch the value of the
named parameter. If the parameter is multivalued (e.g. from multiple
selections in a scrolling list), you can ask to receive an array. Otherwise
the method will return a single value.
If a value is not given in the query string, as in the queries
"name1=&name2=" or "name1&name2", it will be returned as an
empty string (not undef). This feature is new in 2.63, and was
introduced to avoid multiple "undefined value" warnings when running
with the -w switch.
If the parameter does not exist at all, then param() will return undef
in a scalar context, and the empty list in a list context.
$query->param('foo','an','array','of','values');
-or-
$query->param(-name=>'foo',-values=>['an','array','of','values']);
This sets the value for the named parameter 'foo' to one or more
values. These values will be used to initialize form elements, if
you so desire. Note that this is the one way to forcibly change the value
of a form field after it has previously been set.
The second example shows an alternative "named parameter" style of function
call that is accepted by most of the CGI methods. See
Calling CGI functions that Take Multiple Arguments for an explanation of
this style.
$query->append(-name=>'foo',-values=>['yet','more','values']);
This adds a value or list of values to the named parameter. The
values are appended to the end of the parameter if it already exists.
Otherwise the parameter is created.
$query->delete('foo');
This deletes a named parameter entirely. This is useful when you
want to reset the value of the parameter so that it isn't passed
down between invocations of the script.
$query->delete_all();
This deletes all the parameters and leaves you with an empty CGI
object. This may be useful to restore all the defaults produced by
the form element generating methods.
If POSTed data is not of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded or
multipart/form-data, then the POSTed data will not be processed, but
instead be returned as-is in a parameter named POSTDATA. To retrieve
it, use code like this:
my $data = $query->param('POSTDATA');
(If you don't know what the preceding means, don't worry about it. It
only affects people trying to use CGI for XML processing and other
specialized tasks.)
$query->import_names('R');
print "Your name is $R::name\n"
print "Your favorite colors are @R::colors\n";
This imports all parameters into the given name space. For example,
if there were parameters named 'foo1', 'foo2' and 'foo3', after
executing $query->import_names('R')
, the variables
@R::foo1, $R::foo1, @R::foo2, $R::foo2,
etc. would
conveniently spring into existence. Since CGI has no way of
knowing whether you expect a multi- or single-valued parameter,
it creates two variables for each parameter. One is an array,
and contains all the values, and the other is a scalar containing
the first member of the array. Use whichever one is appropriate.
For keyword (a+b+c+d) lists, the variable @R::keywords will be
created.
If you don't specify a name space, this method assumes namespace "Q".
An optional second argument to import_names, if present and
non-zero, will delete the contents of the namespace before loading
it. This may be useful for environments like mod_perl in which the
script does not exit after processing a request.
Warning: do not import into namespace 'main'. This
represents a major security risk, as evil people could then use this
feature to redefine central variables such as @INC.
CGI.pm will exit with an error if you try to do this.
NOTE:
Variable names are transformed as necessary into legal Perl
variable names. All non-legal characters are transformed into
underscores. If you need to keep the original names, you should use
the param() method instead to access CGI variables by name.
$q->param_fetch('address')->[1] = '1313 Mockingbird Lane';
unshift @{$q->param_fetch(-name=>'address')},'George Munster';
If you need access to the parameter list in a way that isn't covered
by the methods above, you can obtain a direct reference to it by
calling the param_fetch() method with the name of the parameter
you want. This will return an array reference to the named
parameters, which you then can manipulate in any way you like.
You may call param_fetch() with the name of the CGI parameter,
or with the -name argument, which has the same meaning as
elsewhere.
Fetching the Parameter List as a Hash
$params = $q->Vars;
print $params->{'address'};
@foo = split("\0",$params->{'foo'});
%params = $q->Vars;
use CGI ':cgi-lib';
$params = Vars;
Many people want to fetch the entire parameter list as a hash in which
the keys are the names of the CGI parameters, and the values are the
parameters' values. The Vars() method does this. Called in a
scalar context, it returns the parameter list as a tied hash
reference. Changing a key changes the value of the parameter in the
underlying CGI parameter list. Called in an list context, it returns
the parameter list as an ordinary hash. This allows you to read the
contents of the parameter list, but not to change it.
When using this, the thing you must watch out for are multivalued CGI
parameters. Because a hash cannot distinguish between scalar and
list context, multivalued parameters will be returned as a packed
string, separated by the "\0" (null) character. You must split this
packed string in order to get at the individual values. This is the
convention introduced long ago by Steve Brenner in his cgi-lib.pl
module for Perl version 4.
If you wish to use Vars() as a function, import the
:cgi-lib set of function calls (also see the section on CGI-LIB compatibility).
Errors can occur while processing user input, particularly when
processing uploaded files. When these errors occur, CGI will stop
processing and return an empty parameter list. You can test for the
existence and nature of errors using the cgi_error()
function. The error messages are formatted as HTTP status codes. You
can either incorporate the error text into an HTML page, or use it as
the value of the HTTP status:
my $error = $q->cgi_error;
if ($error) {
print $q->header(-status=>$error),
$q->start_html('Problems'),
$q->h2('Request not processed'),
$q->strong($error);
exit 0;
}
When using the function-oriented interface (see the next section),
errors may only occur the first time you call
param(). Be prepared for this!
Table of contents
Saving the State to a File
$query->save(\*FILEHANDLE)
This writes the current query out to the file handle of your choice.
The file handle must already be open and be writable, but other than
that it can point to a file, a socket, a pipe, or whatever. The contents
of the form are written out as TAG=VALUE pairs, which can be reloaded
with the new() method at some later time. You can write out multiple
queries to the same file and later read them into query objects one by one.
If you wish to use this method from the function-oriented (non-OO)
interface, the exported name for this method is
save_parameters().
See advanced techniques for more information.
$my_url=$query->self_url
This call returns a URL that, when selected, reinvokes this script with
all its state information intact. This is most useful when you want to
jump around within a script-generated document using internal anchors, but
don't want to disrupt the current contents of the form(s). See
advanced techniques for an example.
If you'd like to get the URL without the entire query string appended to
it, use the url()
method:
$my_self=$query->url
Obtaining the Script's URL
$full_url = $query->url();
$full_url = $query->url(-full=>1); #alternative syntax
$relative_url = $query->url(-relative=>1);
$absolute_url = $query->url(-absolute=>1);
$url_with_path = $query->url(-path_info=>1);
$url_with_path_and_query = $query->url(-path_info=>1,-query=>1);
url()
returns the script's URL in a variety of formats.
Called without any arguments, it returns the full form of the URL,
including host name and port number
http://your.host.com/path/to/script.cgi
You can modify this format with the following named arguments:
- -absolute
- If true, produce an absolute URL, e.g.
/path/to/script.cgi
- -relative
- Produce a relative URL. This is useful if you want to reinvoke your
script with different parameters. For example:
script.cgi
- -full
- Produce the full URL, exactly as if called without any arguments.
This overrides the -relative and -absolute arguments.
- -path,-path_info
- Append the additional path information to the URL. This can be
combined with -full, -absolute or -relative. -path_info
is provided as a synonym.
- -query (-query_string)
- Append the query string to the URL. This can be combined with
-full, -absolute or -relative. -query_string is provided
as a synonym.
Mixing POST and URL Parameters
$color = $query->url_param('color');
It is possible for a script to receive CGI parameters in the URL as
well as in the fill-out form by creating a form that POSTs to a URL
containing a query string (a "?" mark followed by arguments). The
param() method will always return the contents of the POSTed
fill-out form, ignoring the URL's query string. To retrieve URL
parameters, call the url_param() method. Use it in the same
way as param(). The main difference is that it allows you to
read the parameters, but not set them.
Under no circumstances will the contents of the URL query string
interfere with similarly-named CGI parameters in POSTed forms. If you
try to mix a URL query string with a form submitted with the GET
method, the results will not be what you expect.
Table of contents
In versions of CGI.pm prior to 2.0, it could get difficult to remember
the proper order of arguments in CGI function calls that accepted five
or six different arguments. As of 2.0, there's a better way to pass
arguments to the various CGI functions. In this style, you pass a
series of name=>argument pairs, like this:
$field = $query->radio_group(-name=>'OS',
-values=>[Unix,Windows,Macintosh],
-default=>'Unix');
The advantages of this style are that you don't have to remember the
exact order of the arguments, and if you leave out a parameter, it
will usually default to some reasonable value. If you provide
a parameter that the method doesn't recognize, it will usually do
something useful with it, such as incorporating it into the HTML
tag as an attribute. For example if Netscape decides next week to add a new
JUSTIFICATION parameter to the text field tags, you can start using
the feature without waiting for a new version of CGI.pm:
$field = $query->textfield(-name=>'State',
-default=>'gaseous',
-justification=>'RIGHT');
This will result in an HTML tag that looks like this:
<INPUT TYPE="textfield" NAME="State" VALUE="gaseous"
JUSTIFICATION="RIGHT">
Parameter names are case insensitive: you can use -name, or -Name or
-NAME.
Actually, CGI.pm only looks for a hyphen in the first parameter. So
you can leave it off subsequent parameters if you like. Something to
be wary of is the potential that a string constant like "values" will
collide with a keyword (and in fact it does!) While Perl usually
figures out when you're referring to a function and when you're
referring to a string, you probably should put quotation marks around
all string constants just to play it safe.
HTML/HTTP parameters that contain internal hyphens, such as -Content-language
can be passed by putting quotes around them, or by using an underscore
for the second hyphen, e.g. -Content_language.
The fact that you must use curly {} braces around the attributes
passed to functions that create simple HTML tags but don't use them
around the arguments passed to all other functions has many people,
including myself, confused. As of 2.37b7, the syntax is extended to
allow you to use curly braces for all function calls:
$field = $query->radio_group({-name=>'OS',
-values=>[Unix,Windows,Macintosh],
-default=>'Unix'});
Table of contents
print $query->header('image/gif');
This prints out the required HTTP Content-type: header and the requisite
blank line beneath it. If no parameter is specified, it will default to
'text/html'.
An extended form of this method allows you to specify a status code
and a message to pass back to the browser:
print $query->header(-type=>'image/gif',
-status=>'204 No Response');
This presents the browser with a status code of 204 (No response).
Properly-behaved browsers will take no action, simply remaining on the
current page. (This is appropriate for a script that does some
processing but doesn't need to display any results, or for a script
called when a user clicks on an empty part of a clickable image map.)
Several other named parameters are recognized. Here's a
contrived example that uses them all:
print $query->header(-type=>'image/gif',
-status=>'402 Payment Required',
-expires=>'+3d',
-cookie=>$my_cookie,
-charset=>'UTF-7',
-attachment=>'foo.gif',
-Cost=>'$0.02');
-expires
Some browsers, such as Internet Explorer, cache the output of CGI
scripts. Others, such as Netscape Navigator do not. This leads to
annoying and inconsistent behavior when going from one browser to
another. You can force the behavior to be consistent by using the
-expires parameter. When you specify an absolute or
relative expiration interval with this parameter, browsers and
proxy servers will cache the script's output until the indicated
expiration date. The following forms are all valid for the
-expires field:
+30s 30 seconds from now
+10m ten minutes from now
+1h one hour from now
-1d yesterday (i.e. "ASAP!")
now immediately
+3M in three months
+10y in ten years time
Thu, 25-Apr-1999 00:40:33 GMT at the indicated time & date
When you use -expires, the script also generates a
correct time stamp for the generated document to ensure that your
clock and the browser's clock agree. This allows you to create
documents that are reliably cached for short periods of time.
CGI::expires() is the static function call used internally that turns
relative time intervals into HTTP dates. You can call it directly if
you wish.
-cookie
The -cookie parameter generates a header that tells
Netscape browsers to return a "magic cookie" during all subsequent
transactions with your script. HTTP cookies have a special format
that includes interesting attributes such as expiration time. Use the
cookie() method to create and retrieve session
cookies. The value of this parameter can be either a scalar value or
an array reference. You can use the latter to generate multiple
cookies. (You can use the alias -cookies for
readability.)
-nph
The -nph parameter, if set to a non-zero value, will
generate a valid header for use in no-parsed-header scripts. For
example:
print $query->header(-nph=>1,
-status=>'200 OK',
-type=>'text/html');
You will need to use this if:
- You are using Microsoft Internet Information Server.
- If you need to create unbuffered output, for example for use
in a "server push" script.
- To take advantage of HTTP extensions not supported by your server.
See Using NPH Scripts for more information.
-charset
The -charset parameter can be used to control the character set
sent to the browser. If not provided, defaults to ISO-8859-1. As a
side effect, this calls the charset() method to set the behavior for
escapeHTML().
-attachment
The -attachment parameter can be used to turn the page into an
attachment. Instead of displaying the page, some browsers will prompt
the user to save it to disk. The value of the argument is the
suggested name for the saved file. In order for this to work, you may
have to set the -type to "application/octet-stream".
-p3p
The -p3p parameter will add a P3P tag to the outgoing header. The
parameter can be an arrayref or a space-delimited string of P3P tags.
For example:
print header(-p3p=>[qw(CAO DSP LAW CURa)]);
print header(-p3p=>'CAO DSP LAW CURa');
In either case, the outgoing header will be formatted as:
P3P: policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" cp="CAO DSP LAW CURa"
Other header fields
Any other parameters that you pass to header() will be turned
into correctly formatted HTTP header fields, even if they aren't called for
in the current HTTP spec. For example, the example that appears a few paragraphs
above creates a field that looks like this:
Cost: $0.02
You can use this to take advantage of new HTTP header fields without
waiting for the next release of CGI.pm.
print $query->redirect('http://somewhere.else/in/the/world');
This generates a redirection request for the remote browser. It will
immediately go to the indicated URL. You should exit soon after this.
Nothing else will be displayed.
You can add your own headers to this as in the header() method.
You should always use full URLs (including the http: or ftp: part) in
redirection requests. Relative URLs will not work correctly.
An alternative syntax for redirect()
is:
print $query->redirect(-location=>'http://somewhere.else/',
-nph=>1,
-status=>301);
The -location parameter gives the destination URL.
You may also use -uri or -url if you
prefer.
The -nph parameter, if non-zero tells CGI.pm that
this script is running as a no-parsed-header script. See Using NPH Scripts for more information.
The -status parameter will set the status of the
redirect. HTTP defines three different possible redirection status
codes:
301 Moved Permanently
302 Found
303 See Other
The default if not specified is 302, which means "moved temporarily."
You may change the status to another status code if you wish. Be
advised that changing the status to anything other than 301, 302 or
303 will probably break redirection.
The -method parameter tells the browser what method
to use for redirection. This is handy if, for example, your script
was called from a fill-out form POST operation, but you want to
redirect the browser to a static page that requires a GET.
All other parameters recognized by the header() method are
also valid in redirect.
Table of contents
Creating an HTML Header
named parameter style
print $query->start_html(-title=>'Secrets of the Pyramids',
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>-base=>'true',
-meta=>{'keywords'=>'pharoah secret mummy',
'copyright'=>'copyright 1996 King Tut'},
-style=>{'src'=>'/styles/style1.css'},
-dtd=>1,
-BGCOLOR=>'blue');
old style
print $query->start_html('Secrets of the Pyramids',
'fred@capricorn.org','true');
This will return a canned HTML header and the opening <BODY> tag.
All parameters are optional:
- The title (-title)
- The author's e-mail address (will create a <LINK REV="MADE"> tag if present
(-author)
- A true flag if you want to include a <BASE> tag in the header
(-base). This
helps resolve relative addresses to absolute ones when the document is moved,
but makes the document hierarchy non-portable. Use with care!
- A -xbase parameter, if you want to include a <BASE> tag that points
to some external location. Example:
print $query->start_html(-title=>'Secrets of the Pyramids',
-xbase=>'http://www.nile.eg/pyramid.html');
- A -target parameter, if you want to have all links and fill
out forms on the page go to a different frame. Example:
print $query->start_html(-title=>'Secrets of the Pyramids',
-target=>'answer_frame');
-target can be used with either
-xbase or -base.
- A -meta parameter to define one or more <META> tags. Pass
this parameter a reference to an associative array containing key/value pairs. Each
pair becomes a <META> tag in a format similar to this one.
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="pharoah secret mummy">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="copyright 1996 King Tut">
To create an HTTP-EQUIV tag, use the -head argument as described below.
- The -encoding argument can be used to specify the character set for
XHTML. It defaults to iso-8859-1 if not specified.
- The -declare_xml argument, when used in conjunction with XHTML,
will put a <?xml> declaration at the top of the HTML header. The sole
purpose of this declaration is to declare the character set
encoding. In the absence of -declare_xml, the output HTML will contain
a tag that specifies the encoding, allowing the HTML to pass
most validators. The default for -declare_xml is false.
- A -lang> argument is used to incorporate a language attribute into
the <HTM>> tag. The default if not specified is "en-US" for US English. For example:
print $q->start_html(-lang=>'fr-CA');
To leave off the lang attribute, as you must do if you want to generate
legal HTML 3.2 or earlier, pass the empty string (-lang=>'').
- A -dtd parameter to make start_html()
generate an SGML document type definition for the document.
This is used by SGML editors and high-end Web publishing systems
to determine the type of the document. However, it breaks some
browsers, in particular AOL's. The value of this parameter can
be one of:
- A valid DTD (see http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/%7egerald/validate/lib/catalog for a list). Example:
-dtd=>'-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN'
- A true value that does not begin with "-//", in which case
you will get the standard default DTD (valid for HTML 2.0).
You can change the default DTD by calling
default_dtd() with the preferred value.
- A -style parameter to define a cascading stylesheet.
More information on this can be found in Limited Support for Cascading Style Sheets
- A -head parameter to define other arbitrary elements
of the <HEAD> section. For example:
print start_html(-head=>Link({-rel=>'next',
-href=>'http://www.capricorn.com/s2.html'}));
or even
print start_html(-head=>[ Link({-rel=>'next',
-href=>'http://www.capricorn.com/s2.html'}),
Link({-rel=>'previous',
-href=>'http://www.capricorn.com/s1.html'})
]
);
To create an HTTP-EQUIV tag, use something like this:
print start_html(-head=>meta({-http_equiv=>'Content-Type',
-content=>'text/html'}))
- A -script parameter to define Netscape JavaScript functions
to incorporate into the HTML page. This is the preferred way to
define a library of JavaScript functions that will be called
from elsewhere within the page. CGI.pm will attempt to format
the JavaScript code in such a way that non-Netscape browsers won't
try to display the JavaScript
code. Unfortunately some browsers get confused nevertheless.
Here's an example of how to create a JavaScript library and
incorporating it into the HTML code header:
$query = new CGI;
print $query->header;
$JSCRIPT=<<END;
// Ask a silly question
function riddle_me_this() {
var r = prompt("What walks on four legs in the morning, " +
"two legs in the afternoon, " +
"and three legs in the evening?");
response(r);
}
// Get a silly answer
function response(answer) {
if (answer == "man")
alert("Right you are!");
else
alert("Wrong! Guess again.");
}
END
print $query->start_html(-title=>'The Riddle of the Sphinx',
-script=>$JSCRIPT);
Netscape 3.0 and higher allows you to place the JavaScript code
in an external
document and refer to it by URL. This allows you to keep the JavaScript
code in a file or CGI script rather than cluttering up each page with the
source. Netscape 3.X-4.X and Internet Explorer 3.X-4.X also recognize a "language"
parameter that allows you to use other languages, such as VBScript and
PerlScript (yes indeed!) To use these attributes pass a HASH
reference in the -script parameter containing one
or more of the keys language, src, or
code. Here's how to refer to an external script URL:
print $q->start_html(-title=>'The Riddle of the Sphinx',
-script=>{-language=>'JavaScript',
-src=>'/javascript/sphinx.js'}
);
Here's how to refer to scripting code incorporated directly into the page:
print $q->start_html(-title=>'The Riddle of the Sphinx',
-script=>{-language=>'PerlScript',
-code=>'print "hello world!\n;"'}
);
A final feature allows you to incorporate multiple <SCRIPT> sections into the
header. Just pass the list of script sections as an array reference.
This allows you to specify different source files for different dialects
of JavaScript. Example:
print $q->start_html(-title=>'The Riddle of the Sphinx',
-script=>[
{ -language => 'JavaScript1.0',
-src => '/javascript/utilities10.js'
},
{ -language => 'JavaScript1.1',
-src => '/javascript/utilities11.js'
},
{ -language => 'JavaScript1.2',
-src => '/javascript/utilities12.js'
},
{ -language => 'JavaScript28.2',
-src => '/javascript/utilities219.js'
}
]
);
(If this looks a bit extreme, take my advice and stick with straight CGI scripting.)
- A -noScript parameter to pass some HTML that will be displayed
in browsers that do not have JavaScript (or have JavaScript turned off).
- -onLoad and -onUnload parameters to
register JavaScript event handlers to be executed when the
page generated by your script is opened and closed respectively.
Example:
print $query->start_html(-title=>'The Riddle of the Sphinx',
-script=>$JSCRIPT,
-onLoad=>'riddle_me_this()');
See JavaScripting for more details.
- Any additional attributes you want to incorporate into the <BODY>
tag (as many as you like). This is a good way to incorporate other
Netscape extensions, such as background color and wallpaper pattern.
(The example above sets the page background to a vibrant blue.) You can
use this feature to take advantage of new HTML features without
waiting for a CGI.pm release.
Ending an HTML Document
print $query->end_html
This ends an HTML document by printing the </BODY> </HTML> tags.
Other HTML Tags
CGI.pm provides shortcut methods for many other HTML tags. All HTML2
tags and the Netscape extensions are supported, as well as the HTML3
and HTML4 tags. Unpaired tags, paired tags, and tags that contain
attributes are all supported using a simple syntax.
To see the list of HTML tags that are supported, open up the CGI.pm
file and look at the functions defined in the %EXPORT_TAGS array.
Unpaired Tags
Unpaired tags include <P>, <HR> and <BR>. The
syntax for creating them is:
print $query->hr;
This prints out the text "<hr>".
Paired Tags
Paired tags include <EM>, <I> and the like. The syntax
for creating them is:
print $query->em("What a silly art exhibit!");
This prints out the text "<em>What a silly art
exhibit!</em>".
You can pass as many text arguments as you like: they'll be
concatenated together with spaces. This allows you to create nested
tags easily:
print $query->h3("The",$query->em("silly"),"art exhibit");
This creates the text:
<h3>The <em>silly</em> art exhibit</h3>
When used in conjunction with the import
facility, the HTML shortcuts can make CGI scripts easier to read. For
example:
use CGI qw/:standard/;
print h1("Road Guide"),
ol(
li(a({href=>"start.html"},"The beginning")),
li(a({href=>"middle.html"},"The middle")),
li(a({href=>"end.html"},"The end"))
);
Most HTML tags are represented as lowercase function calls. There are
a few exceptions:
- The <tr> tag used to start a new table row conflicts with the
perl translate function
tr()
. Use
TR() or Tr() instead.
- The <param> tag used to pass parameters to an applet
conflicts with CGI's own
param()
method. Use
PARAM() instead.
- The <select> tag used to create selection lists conflicts
with Perl's select() function. Use
Select()
instead.
- The <sub> tag used to create subscripts conflicts
wit Perl's operator for creating subroutines. Use
Sub()
instead.
Tags with Attributes
To add attributes to an HTML tag, simply pass a reference to an
associative array as the first argument. The keys and values of the
associative array become the names and values of the attributes. For
example, here's how to generate an <A> anchor link:
use CGI qw/:standard/;
print a({-href=>"bad_art.html"},"Jump to the silly exhibit");
<A HREF="bad_art.html">Jump to the silly exhibit</A>
You may dispense with the dashes in front of the attribute names if
you prefer:
print img {src=>'fred.gif',align=>'LEFT'};
<IMG ALIGN="LEFT" SRC="fred.gif">
Sometimes an HTML tag attribute has no argument. For example, ordered
lists can be marked as COMPACT, or you wish to specify that a table
has a border with <TABLE BORDER>. The syntax for this is an
argument that that points to an undef string:
print ol({compact=>undef},li('one'),li('two'),li('three'));
Prior to CGI.pm version 2.41, providing an empty ('') string as an
attribute argument was the same as providing undef. However, this has
changed in order to accomodate those who want to create tags of the form
<IMG ALT="">. The difference is shown in this table:
| CODE | RESULT |
| img({alt=>undef}) | <IMG ALT> |
| img({alt=>''}) | <IMT ALT=""> |
Distributive HTML Tags and Tables
All HTML tags are distributive. If you give them an argument
consisting of a reference to a list, the tag will be
distributed across each element of the list. For example, here's one
way to make an ordered list:
print ul(
li({-type=>'disc'},['Sneezy','Doc','Sleepy','Happy']);
);
This example will result in HTML output that looks like this:
<UL>
<LI TYPE="disc">Sneezy</LI>
<LI TYPE="disc">Doc</LI>
<LI TYPE="disc">Sleepy</LI>
<LI TYPE="disc">Happy</LI>
</UL>
You can take advantage of this to create HTML tables easily and
naturally. Here is some code and the HTML it outputs:
use CGI qw/:standard :html3/;
print table({-border=>undef},
caption(strong('When Should You Eat Your Vegetables?')),
Tr({-align=>CENTER,-valign=>TOP},
[
th(['','Breakfast','Lunch','Dinner']),
th('Tomatoes').td(['no','yes','yes']),
th('Broccoli').td(['no','no','yes']),
th('Onions').td(['yes','yes','yes'])
]
)
);
When Should You Eat Your Vegetables?
| Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner |
| Tomatoes | no | yes | yes |
| Broccoli | no | no | yes |
| Onions | yes | yes | yes |
If you want to produce tables programatically, you can do it this way:
use CGI qw/:standard :html3/;
@values = (1..5);
@headings = ('N','N'.sup('2'),'N'.sup('3'));
@rows = th(\@headings);
foreach $n (@values) {
push(@rows,td([$n,$n**2,$n**3]));
}
print table({-border=>undef,-width=>'25%'},
caption(b('Wow. I can multiply!')),
Tr(\@rows)
);
Wow. I can multiply!
| N | N2 | N3 |
| 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 4 | 8 |
| 3 | 9 | 27 |
| 4 | 16 | 64 |
| 5 | 25 | 125 |
Table of contents
General note 1.
The various form-creating methods all return
strings to the caller. These strings will contain the HTML code
that will create the requested form element. You are responsible for
actually printing out these strings. It's set up this way so that you
can place formatting tags around the form elements.
General note 2.
The default values that you specify for the
forms are only used the first time the script is invoked. If there
are already values present in the query string, they are used, even if
blank.
If you want to change the value of a field from its previous
value, you have two choices:
- call the param() method to set it.
- use the -override (alias -force) parameter. (This is a
new feature in 2.15) This forces the default value to be used,
regardless of the previous value of the field:
print $query->textfield(-name=>'favorite_color',
-default=>'red',
-override=>1);
If you want to reset all fields to their defaults, you can:
- Create a special defaults button using the defaults() method.
- Create a hypertext link that calls your script without any parameters.
General note 3. You can put multiple forms on the same page if you
wish. However, be warned that it isn't always easy to preserve state information
for more than one form at a time. See advanced techniques
for some hints.
General note 4. By popular demand, the text and labels that you
provide for form elements are escaped according to HTML rules. This means
that you can safely use "<CLICK ME>" as the label for a button. However,
this behavior may interfere with your ability to incorporate special HTML
character sequences, such as Á (Á) into your fields. If
you wish to turn off automatic escaping, call the autoEscape()
method with a false value immediately after creating the CGI object:
$query = new CGI;
$query->autoEscape(0);
You can turn autoescaping back on at any time with $query->autoEscape(1)
General note 5. Some of the form-element generating methods
return multiple tags. In a scalar context, the tags will be
concatenated together with spaces, or whatever is the current value of
the $" global. In a list context, the methods will return a list of
elements, allowing you to modify them if you wish. Usually you will
not notice this behavior, but beware of this:
printf("%s\n",$query->end_form())
end_form() produces several tags, and only the first of them will be
printed because the format only expects one value.
Form Elements
Up to table of contents
print $query->isindex($action);
isindex() without any arguments returns an
<ISINDEX> tag that designates your script as the URL to call.
If you want the browser to call a different URL to handle the search,
pass isindex() the URL you want to be called.
print $query->startform($method,$action,$encoding);
...various form stuff...
print $query->endform;
startform() will return a <FORM> tag with the
optional method, action and form encoding that you specify.
endform() returns a </FORM> tag.
The form encoding supports the "file upload" feature of Netscape
2.0 (and higher) and Internet Explorer 4.0 (and higher). The form
encoding tells the browser how to package up the contents of the form
in order to transmit it across the Internet. There are two types of
encoding that you can specify:
- application/x-www-form-urlencoded
- This is the type of encoding used by all browsers prior to
Netscape 2.0. It is compatible with many CGI scripts and is
suitable for short fields containing text data. For your
convenience, CGI.pm stores the name of this encoding
type in
$CGI::URL_ENCODED
.
- multipart/form-data
- This is the newer type of encoding introduced by Netscape 2.0.
It is suitable for forms that contain very large fields or that
are intended for transferring binary data. Most importantly,
it enables the "file upload" feature of Netscape 2.0 forms. For
your convenience, CGI.pm stores the name of this encoding type
in
CGI::MULTIPART()
Forms that use this type of encoding are not easily interpreted
by CGI scripts unless they use CGI.pm or another library that
knows how to handle them. Unless you are using the file upload
feature, there's no particular reason to use this type of encoding.
For compatibility, the startform() method uses the older form of
encoding by default. If you want to use the newer form of encoding
By default, you can call start_multipart_form()
instead of startform()
.
If you plan to make use of the JavaScript
features, you can provide startform()
with the
optional -name
and/or -onSubmit
parameters.
-name
has no effect on the display of the form, but can
be used to give the form an identifier so that it can be manipulated
by JavaScript functions. Provide the -onSubmit
parameter
in order to register some JavaScript code to be performed just before
the form is submitted. This is useful for checking the validity of a
form before submitting it. Your JavaScript code should return a value
of "true" to let Netscape know that it can go ahead and submit the
form, and "false" to abort the submission.
print $query->start_multipart_form($method,$action,$encoding);
...various form stuff...
print $query->endform;
This has exactly the same usage as startform()
, but
it specifies form encoding type multipart/form-data
as the default.
Named parameter style
print $query->textfield(-name=>'field_name',
-default=>'starting value',
-size=>50,
-maxlength=>80);
Old style
print $query->textfield('foo','starting value',50,80);
textfield() will return a text input field.
- The first parameter (-name) is the required name for the field.
- The optional second parameter (-default) is the starting value
for the field contents.
- The optional third parameter (-size) is the size of the field in
characters.
- The optional fourth parameter (-maxlength) is the
maximum number of characters the field will accomodate.
As with all these methods, the field will be initialized with its
previous contents from earlier invocations of the script. If you
want to force in the new value, overriding the existing one, see
General note 2.
When the form is processed, the value of the text field can be
retrieved with:
$value = $query->param('foo');
JavaScripting: You can also provide
-onChange, -onFocus, -onBlur, -onMouseOver, -onMouseOut and
-onSelect parameters to register
JavaScript event handlers.
Named parameter style
print $query->textarea(-name=>'foo',
-default=>'starting value',
-rows=>10,
-columns=>50);
Old style
print $query->textarea('foo','starting value',10,50);
textarea() is just like textfield(), but it allows you to specify
rows and columns for a multiline text entry box. You can provide
a starting value for the field, which can be long and contain
multiple lines.
JavaScripting: Like textfield(), you can provide
-onChange, -onFocus, -onBlur, -onMouseOver,
-onMouseOut and -onSelect parameters to
register JavaScript event handlers.
Named parameter style
print $query->password_field(-name=>'secret',
-value=>'starting value',
-size=>50,
-maxlength=>80);
Old style
print $query->password_field('secret','starting value',50,80);
password_field() is identical to textfield(), except that its contents
will be starred out on the web page.
Named parameters style
print $query->filefield(-name=>'uploaded_file',
-default=>'starting value',
-size=>50,
-maxlength=>80);
Old style
print $query->filefield('uploaded_file','starting value',50,80);
filefield() will return a form field that prompts the user
to upload a file.
- The first parameter (-name) is the required name for the field.
- The optional second parameter (-default) is the starting value
for the file name.
This field is currently ignored by all browsers, but there's
always hope!
- The optional third parameter (-size) is the size of the field in
characters.
- The optional fourth parameter (-maxlength) is the
maximum number of characters the field will accomodate.
filefield() will return a file upload field for use with recent
browsers. The browser will prompt the remote user to select a file to
transmit over the Internet to the server. Other browsers currently
ignore this field.
In order to take full advantage of the file upload
facility you must use the new multipart
form encoding scheme. You can do this either
by calling startform()
and specify an encoding type of $CGI::MULTIPART
or by using the new start_multipart_form()
method. If you don't use multipart encoding, then you'll be
able to retrieve the name of the file selected by the remote
user, but you won't be able to access its contents.
When the form is processed, you can retrieve the entered filename
by calling param().
$filename = $query->param('uploaded_file');
where "uploaded_file" is whatever you named the file upload field.
Depending on the browser version, the filename that gets returned may
be the full local file path on the remote user's
machine, or just the bare filename. If a path is provided, the
follows the path conventions of the local machine.
The filename returned is also a file handle. You can read the contents
of the file using standard Perl file reading calls:
# Read a text file and print it out
while (<$filename>) {
print;
}
# Copy a binary file to somewhere safe
open (OUTFILE,">>/usr/local/web/users/feedback");
while ($bytesread=read($filename,$buffer,1024)) {
print OUTFILE $buffer;
}
close $filename;
There are problems with the dual nature of the upload fields. If you
use strict
, then Perl will complain when you try to use a
string as a filehandle. You can get around this by placing the file
reading code in a block containing the no strict
pragma.
More seriously, it is possible for the remote user to type garbage
into the upload field, in which case what you get from param()
is not a filehandle at all, but a string.
To be safe, use the upload() function (new in version 2.47).
When called with the name of an upload field, upload() returns a
filehandle, or undef if the parameter is not a valid filehandle.
$fh = $query->upload('uploaded_file');
while (<$fh>) {
print;
}
In an list context, upload() will return an array of filehandles.
This makes it possible to create forms that use the same name for
multiple upload fields.
This is the recommended idiom.
You can have several file upload fields in the same form, and even
give them the same name if you like (in the latter case
param()
will return a list of file names). However, if
the user attempts to upload several files with exactly the same name,
CGI.pm will only return the last of them. This is a known bug.
When processing an uploaded file, CGI.pm creates a temporary file on
your hard disk and passes you a file handle to that file. After you
are finished with the file handle, CGI.pm unlinks (deletes) the
temporary file. If you need to you can access the temporary file
directly. Its name is stored inside the CGI object's "private" data,
and you can access it by passing the file name to the
tmpFileName() method:
$filename = $query->param('uploaded_file');
$tmpfilename = $query->tmpFileName($filename);
The temporary file will be deleted automatically when your program
exits unless you manually rename it. On some operating systems (such
as Windows NT), you will need to close the temporary file's filehandle
before your program exits. Otherwise the attempt to delete the
temporary file will fail.
You can set up a callback that will be called whenever a file upload
is being read during the form processing. This is much like the
UPLOAD_HOOK facility available in Apache::Request, with the exception
that the first argument to the callback is an Apache::Upload object,
here it's the remote filename.
$q = CGI->new(\&hook);
sub hook {
my ($filename, $buffer, $bytes_read, $data) = @_;
print "Read $bytes_read bytes of $filename\n";
}
If using the function-oriented interface, call the CGI::upload_hook()
method before calling param() or any other CGI functions:
CGI::upload_hook(\&hook,$data);
This method is not exported by default. You will have to import it
explicitly if you wish to use it without the CGI:: prefix.
A potential problem with the temporary file upload feature is that the
temporary file is accessible to any local user on the system. In
previous versions of this module, the temporary file was world
readable, meaning that anyone could peak at what was being uploaded.
As of version 2.36, the modes on the temp file have been changed to
read/write by owner only. Only the Web server and its CGI scripts can
access the temp file. Unfortunately this means that one CGI script
can spy on another! To make the temporary files
really private, set the CGI global variable
$CGI::PRIVATE_TEMPFILES to 1. Alternatively, call the built-in
function CGI::private_tempfiles(1), or just use CGI
qw/-private_tempfiles. The temp file will now be unlinked as
soon as it is created, making it inaccessible to other users. The
downside of this is that you will be unable to access
this temporary file directly (tmpFileName() will continue
to return a string, but you will find no file at that location.)
Further, since PRIVATE_TEMPFILES is a global variable, its setting
will affect all instances of CGI.pm if you are running mod_perl. You
can work around this limitation by declaring $CGI::PRIVATE_TEMPFILES
as a local at the top of your script.
On Windows NT, it is impossible to make a temporary file private.
This is because Windows doesn't allow you to delete a file before
closing it.
Usually the browser sends along some header information along with the
text of the file itself. Currently the headers contain only the
original file name and the MIME content type (if known). Future
browsers might send other information as well (such as modification
date and size). To retrieve this information, call
uploadInfo(). It returns a reference to an
associative array containing all the document headers. For example,
this code fragment retrieves the MIME type of the uploaded file (be
careful to use the proper capitalization for "Content-Type"!):
$filename = $query->param('uploaded_file');
$type = $query->uploadInfo($filename)->{'Content-Type'};
unless ($type eq 'text/html') {
die "HTML FILES ONLY!";
}
JavaScripting: Like textfield(), filefield() accepts
-onChange, -onFocus, -onBlur, -onMouseOver,
-onMouseOut and -onSelect parameters to
register JavaScript event handlers.
Caveats and potential problems in
the file upload feature.
Named parameter style
print $query->popup_menu(-name=>'menu_name',
-values=>[qw/eenie meenie minie/],
-labels=>{'eenie'=>'one',
'meenie'=>'two',
'minie'=>'three'},
-default=>'meenie');
print $query->popup_menu(-name=>'menu_name',
-values=>['eenie','meenie','minie'],
-default=>'meenie');
Old style
print $query->popup_menu('menu_name',
['eenie','meenie','minie'],'meenie',
{'eenie'=>'one','meenie'=>'two','minie'=>'three'});
popup_menu() creates a menu.
- The required first argument (-name) is the menu's name.
- The required second argument (-values) is an array
reference containing the list
of menu items in the menu. You can pass the method an anonymous
array, as shown in the example, or a reference to a named array,
such as \@foo. If you pass a HASH reference,
the keys will be used for the menu values, and the values will
be used for the menu labels (see -labels below). However, the
menu values will be in arbitrary order.
- The optional third parameter (-default) is the name of the
default menu choice.
If not specified, the first item will be the default. The value of
the previous choice will be maintained across queries.
- The optional fourth parameter (-labels) allows you
to pass a reference to an associative array containing user-visible
labels for one or more of the menu items. You can use this when you
want the user to see one menu string, but have the browser return your
program a different one. If you don't specify this, the value string
will be used instead ("eenie", "meenie" and "minie" in this
example). This is equivalent to using a hash reference for the
-values parameter.
When the form is processed, the selected value of the popup menu can
be retrieved using:
$popup_menu_value = $query->param('menu_name');
JavaScripting: You can provide -onChange,
-onFocus, -onMouseOver, -onMouseOut, and -onBlur parameters
to register JavaScript event handlers.
Named parameter style
print $query->scrolling_list(-name=>'list_name',
-values=>['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
-default=>['eenie','moe'],
-size=>5,
-multiple=>'true',
-labels=>\%labels);
Old style
print $query->scrolling_list('list_name',
['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
['eenie','moe'],5,'true',
\%labels);
scrolling_list() creates a scrolling list.
- The first and second arguments (-name, -values)are the list name
and values, respectively. As in the popup menu, the second argument should
be an array reference or hash reference. In the latter case,
the values of the hash are used as the human-readable labels in
the list.
- The optional third argument (-default)can be either a reference
to a list containing the values to be selected by default, or can be a
single value to select. If this argument is missing or undefined,
then nothing is selected when the list first appears.
- The optional fourth argument (-size) is the display size of the list.
- The optional fifth argument (-multiple) can be set to true to allow multiple
simultaneous selections.
- The option sixth argument (-labels) can be used to assign user-visible labels
to the list items different from the ones used for the values
as above. This is equivalent to passing a hash reference to -values.
In this example we assume that an associative array
%labels
has already been created.
When this form is processed, all selected list items will be returned as
a list under the parameter name 'list_name'. The values of the
selected items can be retrieved with:
@selected = $query->param('list_name');
JavaScripting: You can provide -onChange,
-onFocus, -onMouseOver, -onMouseOut and
-onBlur parameters to register JavaScript event handlers.
Named parameter style
print $query->checkbox_group(-name=>'group_name',
-values=>['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
-default=>['eenie','moe'],
-linebreak=>'true',
-labels=>\%labels);
Old Style
print $query->checkbox_group('group_name',
['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
['eenie','moe'],'true',\%labels);
HTML3 Browsers Only
print $query->checkbox_group(-name=>'group_name',
-values=>['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
-rows=>2,-columns=>2);
checkbox_group() creates a list of checkboxes that are related
by the same name.
- The first and second arguments (-name, -values) are the checkbox
name and values,
respectively. As in the popup menu, the second argument should
be an array reference or a hash reference. These values are
used for the user-readable labels printed next to the checkboxes
as well as for the values passed to your script in the query string.
- The optional third argument (-default) can be either a
reference to a list
containing the values to be checked by default, or can be a
single value to checked. If this argument is missing or undefined,
then nothing is selected when the list first appears.
- The optional fourth argument (-linebreak) can be set to true to
place line breaks
between the checkboxes so that they appear as a vertical list.
Otherwise, they will be strung together on a horizontal line.
When the form is procesed, all checked boxes will be returned as
a list under the parameter name 'group_name'. The values of the
"on" checkboxes can be retrieved with:
- The optional fifth argument (-labels) is a reference to an hash
of checkbox labels. This allows you to use different strings for
the user-visible button labels and the values sent to your script. In
this example we assume that an associative array
%labels
has previously been created. This is equivalent to passing a
hash reference to -values. If you don't use
-nolabels, CGI.pm will add HTML label
tag around each checkbox and its label, so a browser can identify the
text as form element label properly.
- The optional parameter -nolabels can be used to
suppress the printing of labels next to the button. This is
useful if you want to capture the button elements individually and use them
inside labeled HTML3 tables.
- Browsers that understand HTML3 tables
(such as Netscape) can take advantage of the optional
parameters -rows, and -columns.
These parameters cause
checkbox_group() to return an HTML3 compatible table containing
the checkbox group formatted with the specified number of rows
and columns. You can provide just the -columns parameter if you
wish; checkbox_group will calculate the correct number of rows
for you.
To include row and column headings in the returned table, you
can use the -rowheaders and -colheaders
parameters. Both
of these accept a pointer to an array of headings to use.
The headings are just decorative. They don't reorganize the
interpetation of the checkboxes -- they're still a single named
unit.
When viewed with browsers that don't understand HTML3 tables, the
-rows and -columns parameters will leave you
with a group of buttons that may be awkwardly formatted but
still useable. However, if you add row
and/or column headings, the resulting text will be very hard to
read.
When the form is processed, the list of checked buttons in the group
can be retrieved like this:
@turned_on = $query->param('group_name');
This function actually returns an array of button elements. You can
capture the array and do interesting things with it, such as incorporating
it into your own tables or lists. The -nolabels option
is also useful in this regard:
@h = $query->checkbox_group(-name=>'choice',
-value=>['fee','fie','foe'],
-nolabels=>1);
create_nice_table(@h);
JavaScripting: You can provide an -onClick
parameter to register some JavaScript
code to be performed every time the user clicks on any of the buttons
in the group.
Named parameter list
print $query->checkbox(-name=>'checkbox_name',
-checked=>'checked',
-value=>'TURNED ON',
-label=>'Turn me on');
Old style
print $query->checkbox('checkbox_name',1,'TURNED ON','Turn me on');
checkbox() is used to create an isolated checkbox that isn't logically
related to any others.
- The first parameter (-name is the required name
for the checkbox. It
will also be used for the user-readable label printed next to
the checkbox.
- The optional second parameter (-checked specifies
that the checkbox is turned on by default. Aliases for this
parameter are -selected and -on.
- The optional third parameter (-value specifies
the value of the checkbox
when it is checked. If not provided, the word "on" is assumed.
- The optional fourth parameter (-label assigns a
user-visible label to the button.
If not provided, the checkbox's name will be used.
CGI.pm will add HTML label tag around the checkbox and its label,
so a browser can identify the text as form element label properly.
The value of the checkbox can be retrieved using:
$turned_on = $query->param('checkbox_name');
JavaScripting: You can provide an -onClick
parameter to register some JavaScript
code to be performed every time the user clicks on the button.
Named parameter style
print $query->radio_group(-name=>'group_name',
-values=>['eenie','meenie','minie'],
-default=>'meenie',
-linebreak=>'true',
-labels=>\%labels);
Old style
print $query->radio_group('group_name',['eenie','meenie','minie'],
'meenie','true',\%labels);
HTML3-compatible browsers only
print $query->radio_group(-name=>'group_name',
-values=>['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
-rows=>2,-columns=>2);
radio_group() creates a set of logically-related radio buttons.
Turning one member of the group on turns the others off.
- The first argument (-name is the name of the
group and is required.
- The second argument (-values is the list of
values for the radio buttons.
The values and the labels that appear on the page are identical.
Pass an array reference in the second argument, either using
an anonymous array, as shown, or by referencing a named array as
in
\@foo
. You may also use a hash reference in
order to produce human-readable labels that are different from
the values that will be returned as parameters to the CGI
script.
- The optional third parameter (-default is the
value of the default button to
turn on. If not specified, the first item will be the default. Specify
some nonexistent value, such as "-" if you don't want any button
to be turned on.
- The optional fourth parameter (-linebreak can be
set to 'true' to put
line breaks between the buttons, creating a vertical list.
- The optional fifth parameter (-labels specifies
an associative array containing labels to be printed next to
each button. If not provided the button value will be
used instead. This example assumes that the associative array
%labels
has already been defined. This is
equivalent to passing a hash reference to -values.
If you don't use -nolabels, CGI.pm will add HTML label
tag around each radio button and its label, so a browser can identify the
text as form element label properly.
- The optional parameter -nolabels can be used to
suppress the printing of labels next to the button. This is
useful if you want to capture the button elements individually and use them
inside labeled HTML3 tables.
- Browsers that understand HTML3 tables
(such as Netscape) can take advantage of the optional
parameters -rows, and -columns.
These parameters cause
radio_group() to return an HTML3 compatible table containing
the radio cluster formatted with the specified number of rows
and columns. You can provide just the -columns parameter if you
wish; radio_group will calculate the correct number of rows
for you.
To include row and column headings in the returned table, you
can use the -rowheader and -colheader
parameters. Both
of these accept a pointer to an array of headings to use.
The headings are just decorative. They don't reorganize the
interpetation of the radio buttons -- they're still a single named
unit.
When viewed with browsers that don't understand HTML3 tables, the
-rows and -columns parameters will leave you
with a group of buttons that may be awkwardly formatted but
still useable. However, if you add row
and/or column headings, the resulting text will be very hard to
read.
When the form is processed, the selected radio button can
be retrieved using:
$which_radio_button = $query->param('group_name');
This function actually returns an array of button elements. You can
capture the array and do interesting things with it, such as incorporating
it into your own tables or lists The -nolabels option
is useful in this regard.:
@h = $query->radio_group(-name=>'choice',
-value=>['fee','fie','foe'],
-nolabels=>1);
create_nice_table(@h);
JavaScripting: You can provide an -onClick
parameter to register some JavaScript
code to be performed every time the user clicks on any of the buttons
in the group.
Named parameter style
print $query->submit(-name=>'button_name',
-value=>'value');
Old style
print $query->submit('button_name','value');
submit() will create the query submission button. Every form
should have one of these.
JavaScripting: You can provide an -onClick
parameter to register some JavaScript
code to be performed every time the user clicks on the button.
You can't prevent a form from being submitted, however. You must
provide an -onSubmit handler to the form
itself to do that.
print $query->reset
reset() creates the "reset" button. It undoes whatever
changes the user has recently made to the form, but does not
necessarily reset the form all the way to the defaults. See defaults()
for that. It takes the optional label for the button ("Reset" by default).
JavaScripting: You can provide an -onClick
parameter to register some JavaScript
code to be performed every time the user clicks on the button.
print $query->defaults('button_label')
defaults() creates "reset to defaults" button.
It takes the optional label for the button ("Defaults" by default).
When the user presses this button, the form will automagically
be cleared entirely and set to the defaults you specify in your
script, just as it was the first time it was called.
Named parameter style
print $query->hidden(-name=>'hidden_name',
-default=>['value1','value2'...]);
Old style
print $query->hidden('hidden_name','value1','value2'...);
hidden() produces a text field that can't be seen by the user. It
is useful for passing state variable information from one invocation
of the script to the next.
- The first argument (-name) is required and
specifies the name of this field.
- The second and subsequent arguments specify the value for the hidden field.
This is a quick and dirty way of passing perl arrays through forms. If
you use the named parameter style, you must provide the parameter
-default and an array reference here.
As of version 2.0 I have changed the behavior of hidden fields
once again. Read this if you use hidden fields.
Hidden fields used to behave differently from all other fields: the
provided default values always overrode the "sticky" values. This was the
behavior people seemed to expect, however it turns out to make it harder
to write state-maintaining forms such as shopping cart programs. Therefore
I have made the behavior consistent with other fields.
Just like all the other form elements, the value of a
hidden field is "sticky". If you want to replace a hidden field with
some other values after the script has been called once you'll have to
do it manually before writing out the form element:
$query->param('hidden_name','new','values','here');
print $query->hidden('hidden_name');
Fetch the value of a hidden field this way:
$hidden_value = $query->param('hidden_name');
-or (for values created with arrays)-
@hidden_values = $query->param('hidden_name');
Named parameter style
print $query->image_button(-name=>'button_name',
-src=>'/images/NYNY.gif',
-align=>'MIDDLE');
Old style
print $query->image_button('button_name','/source/URL','MIDDLE');
image_button() produces an inline image that acts as
a submission button. When selected, the form is submitted and the
clicked (x,y) coordinates are submitted as well.
- The first argument(-name is required and
specifies the name of this
field.
- The second argument (-srcspecifies the URL of
the image to display. It
must be one of the types supported by inline images (e.g. GIF), but
can be any local or remote URL.
- The third argument (-alignis anything you might
want to use in the ALIGN attribute, such as
TOP, BOTTOM, LEFT, RIGHT or MIDDLE. This field is optional.
When the image is clicked, the results are passed to your script in two
parameters named "button_name.x" and "button_name.y", where "button_name"
is the name of the image button.
$x = $query->param('button_name.x');
$y = $query->param('button_name.y');
JavaScripting: Current versions of JavaScript do not
honor the -onClick
handler, unlike other buttons.
Named parameter style
print $query->button(-name=>'button1',
-value=>'Click Me',
-onClick=>'doButton(this)');
Old style
print $query->image_button('button1','Click Me','doButton(this)');
button() creates a JavaScript button. When the button is
pressed, the JavaScript code pointed to by the -onClick
parameter
is executed. This only works with Netscape 2.0 and higher. Other browsers
do not recognize JavaScript and probably won't even display the button.
- The first argument(-name is required and
specifies the name of this field.
- The second argument (-value gives the button
a value, and will be used as the user-visible label on the button.
- The third argument (-onClick is any valid
JavaScript code. It's usually a call to a JavaScript function
defined somewhere else (see the start_html()
method), but can be any JavaScript you like. Multiple lines
are allowed, but you must be careful not to include any double
quotes in the JavaScript text.
See JavaScripting for more information.
By default, if you use a special HTML character such as >, <
or & as the label or value of a button, it will be escaped
using the appropriate HTML escape sequence (e.g. >). This
lets you use anything at all for the text of a form field without
worrying about breaking the HTML document. However, it may also
interfere with your ability to use special characters, such as
Á as default contents of fields. You can turn this
feature on and off with the method autoEscape()
.
Use
$query->autoEscape(0);
to turn automatic HTML escaping off, and
$query->autoEscape(1);
to turn it back on.
A large number of scripts allocate only a single query object, use it
to read parameters or to create a fill-out form, and then discard it.
For this type of script, it may be handy to import CGI module methods
into your name space. The most common syntax for this is:
use CGI qw(:standard);
This imports the standard methods into your namespace. Now instead of
getting parameters like this:
use CGI;
$dinner = $query->param('entree');
You can do it like this:
use CGI qw(:standard);
$dinner = param('entree');
Similarly, instead of creating a form like this:
print $query->start_form,
"Check here if you're happy: ",
$query->checkbox(-name=>'happy',-value=>'Y',-checked=>1),
"<P>",
$query->submit,
$query->end_form;
You can create it like this:
print start_form,
"Check here if you're happy: ",
checkbox(-name=>'happy',-value=>'Y',-checked=>1),
p,
submit,
end_form;
Even though there's no CGI object in view in the second example, state
is maintained using an implicit CGI object that's created
automatically. The form elements created this way are sticky, just as
before. If you need to get at the implicit CGI object directly, you
can refer to it as:
$CGI::Q;
The use CGI statement is used to import method names
into the current name space. There is a slight overhead for each name
you import, but ordinarily is nothing to worry about. You can import
selected method names like this:
use CGI qw(header start_html end_html);
Ordinarily, however, you'll want to import groups of methods using
export tags. Export tags refer to sets of logically related methods
which are imported as a group with use. Tags are
distinguished from ordinary methods by beginning with a ":" character.
This example imports the methods dealing with the CGI protocol
(param()
and the like) as well as shortcuts that generate
HTML2-compliant tags:
use CGI qw(:cgi :html2);
Currently there are 8 method families defined in CGI.pm. They are:
- :cgi
- These are all the tags that support one feature or another of
the CGI protocol, including param(), path_info(), cookie(),
request_method(), header() and the like.
- :form
- These are all the form element-generating methods, including
start_form(), textfield(), etc.
- :html2
- These are HTML2-defined shortcuts such as br(), p() and head().
It also includes such things
as start_html() and end_html() that aren't exactly HTML2, but
are close enough.
- :html3
- These contain various HTML3 tags for tables, frames, super- and
subscripts, applets and other objects.
- :html4
- These contain various HTML4 tags, including table headers and footers.
- :netscape
- These are Netscape extensions not included in the HTML3
category including blink() and center().
- :html
- These are all the HTML generating shortcuts, comprising the
union of html2, html3, and netscape.
- :multipart
- These are various functions that simplify creating documents of
the various multipart MIME types, and are useful for
implementing server push.
- :standard
- This is the union of html2, html3, html4, form, and
:cgi.
- :all
- This imports all the public methods into your namespace!
Pragmas
In addition to importing individual methods and method families,
use CGI recognizes several pragmas, all proceeded by
dashes.
- -any
- When you use CGI -any, then any method that the
query object doesn't recognize will be interpreted as a new HTML tag.
This allows you to support the next ad hoc Netscape or
Microsoft HTML extension. For example, to support Netscape's latest
tag, <GRADIENT> (which causes the user's desktop to be flooded
with a rotating gradient fill until his machine reboots), you can use
something like this:
use CGI qw(-any);
$q=new CGI;
print $q->gradient({speed=>'fast',start=>'red',end=>'blue'});
Since using any causes any mistyped method name
to be interpreted as an HTML tag, use it with care or not at
all.
- -compile
- This causes the indicated autoloaded methods to be compiled up front,
rather than deferred to later. This is useful for scripts that
run for an extended period of time under FastCGI or mod_perl,
and for those destined to be crunched by Malcolm Beattie's Perl
compiler. Use it in conjunction with the methods or method familes
you plan to use.
use CGI qw(-compile :standard :html3);
or even
use CGI qw(-compile :all);
Note that using the -compile pragma in this way will always have
the effect of importing the compiled functions into the current
namespace. If you want to compile without importing use the
compile() method instead.
- -autoload
- Overrides the autoloader so that any function in your program that is
not recognized is referred to CGI.pm for possible evaluation.
This allows you to use all the CGI.pm functions without adding
them to your symbol table, which is of concern for mod_perl
users who are worried about memory consumption.
Warning: when -autoload is in effect,
you cannot use "poetry mode" (functions without the
parenthesis). Use hr() rather than
hr, or add something like use subs qw/hr p
header/ to the top of your script.
- -nosticky
- Turns off "sticky" behavior in fill-out forms. Every form
element will act as if you passed -override.
- -no_xhtml
- By default, CGI.pm versions 2.69 and higher emit XHTML
(http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/).
The -no_xhtml pragma disables this feature. Thanks to Michalis Kabrianis
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>for this feature.
- -nph
- This makes CGI.pm produce a header appropriate for an NPH (no
parsed header) script. You may need to do other things as well
to tell the server that the script is NPH. See the discussion
of NPH scripts below.
- -oldstyle_urls
- Separate the name=value pairs in CGI parameter query strings emitted by
self_url() and query_string() with ampersands. Otherwise, CGI.pm emits
HTML-compliant semicolons. If you use this form, be sure to escape ampersands
into HTML entities with escapeHTML. Example:
$href = $q->self_url();
$href = escapeHTML($href);
print I'm talking to myself
- -newstyle_urls
- Separate the name=value pairs in CGI parameter query strings with
semicolons rather than ampersands. For example:
name=fred;age=24;favorite_color=3
As of version 2.64, this is the default style.
- -no_debug
- This turns off the command-line processing features. If you
want to run a CGI.pm script from the command line to produce
HTML, and you don't want it interpreting arguments on the command
line as CGI name=value arguments, then use this pragma:
use CGI qw(-no_debug :standard);
- -debug
- This turns on full debugging. In addition to reading CGI arguments
from the command-line processing, CGI.pm will pause and try to read
arguments from STDIN, producing the message "(offline mode: enter
name=value pairs on standard input)" features.
See debugging for more details.
- -private_tempfiles
- CGI.pm can process uploaded file. Ordinarily it spools the
uploaded file to a temporary directory, then deletes the file
when done. However, this opens the risk of eavesdropping as
described in the file upload section.
Another CGI script author could peek at this data during the
upload, even if it is confidential information. On Unix systems,
the -private_tempfiles
pragma will cause the temporary file to be unlinked as soon
as it is opened and before any data is written into it,
eliminating the risk of eavesdropping.
Special Forms for Importing HTML-Tag Functions
Many of the methods generate HTML tags. As described below, tag
functions automatically generate both the opening and closing tags.
For example:
print h1('Level 1 Header');
produces
<H1>Level 1 Header</H1>
There will be some times when you want to produce the start and end
tags yourself. In this case, you can use the form
start_Itag_name and end_Itag_name, as in:
print start_h1,'Level 1 Header',end_h1;
With a few exceptions (described below), start_tag_name
and end_Itag_name functions are not generated
automatically when you use CGI. However, you can specify
the tags you want to generate start/end functions for by
putting an asterisk in front of their name, or, alternatively,
requesting either "start_tag_name" or
"end_tag_name" in the import list.
Example:
use CGI qw/:standard *table start_ul/;
In this example, the following functions are generated in addition to
the standard ones:
start_table()
(generates a <TABLE> tag)
end_table()
(generates a </TABLE> tag)
start_ul()
(generates a <UL> tag)
end_ul()
(generates a </UL> tag)
AUTOESCAPING HTML
By default, all HTML that are emitted by the form-generating functions
are passed through a function called escapeHTML():
$escaped_string = escapeHTML("unescaped string");
Provided that you have specified a character set of ISO-8859-1 (the
default), the standard HTML escaping rules will be used. The "<"
character becomes "<", ">" becomes ">", "&"
becomes "&", and the quote character becomes """. In
addition, the hexadecimal 0x8b and 0x9b characters, which many
windows-based browsers interpret as the left and right angle-bracket
characters, are replaced by their numeric HTML entities ("‹"
and "›"). If you manually change the charset, either by
calling the charset() method explicitly or by passing a -charset
argument to header(), then all characters will be replaced by
their numeric entities, since CGI.pm has no lookup table for all the
possible encodings.
Autoescaping does not apply to other HTML-generating functions, such
as h1(). You should call escapeHTML() yourself on any data that is
passed in from the outside, such as nasty text that people may enter
into guestbooks.
To change the character set, use charset(). To turn
autoescaping off completely, use autoescape():
$charset = charset([$charset]); # Get or set the current character set.
$flag = autoEscape([$flag]); # Get or set the value of the autoescape flag.
PRETTY-PRINTING HTML
By default, all the HTML produced by these functions comes out as one
long line without carriage returns or indentation. This is yuck, but
it does reduce the size of the documents by 10-20%. To get
pretty-printed output, please use CGI::Pretty, a subclass
contributed by Brian Paulsen.
Optional Utility Functions
In addition to the standard imported functions, there are a few
optional functions that you must request by name if you want them.
They were originally intended for internal use only, but are now made
available by popular request.
escape(), unescape()
use CGI qw/escape unescape/;
$q = escape('This $string contains ~wonderful~ characters');
$u = unescape($q);
These functions escape and unescape strings according to the URL
hex escape rules. For example, the space character will be converted
into the string "%20".
escapeHTML(), unescapeHTML()
use CGI qw/escapeHTML unescapeHTML/;
$q = escapeHTML('This string is <illegal> html!');
$u = unescapeHTML($q);
These functions escape and unescape strings according to the HTML
character entity rules. For example, the character < will be
escaped as <.
Ordinarily CGI.pm autoloads most of its functions on an as-needed
basis. This speeds up the loading time by deferring the compilation
phase. However, if you are using mod_perl, FastCGI or another system
that uses a persistent Perl interpreter, you will want to precompile
the methods at initialization time. To accomplish this, call the
package function compile() like this:
use CGI ();
CGI->compile(':all');
The arguments to compile() are a list of method names or sets,
and are identical to those accepted by the use operator.
If you are running the script
from the command line or in the perl debugger, you can pass the script
a list of keywords or parameter=value pairs on the command line or
from standard input (you don't have to worry about tricking your
script into reading from environment variables).
You can pass keywords like this:
my_script.pl keyword1 keyword2 keyword3
or this:
my_script.pl keyword1+keyword2+keyword3
or this:
my_script.pl name1=value1 name2=value2
or this:
my_script.pl name1=value1&name2=value2
If you pass the -debug pragma to CGI.pm, you can send CGI
name-value pairs as newline-delimited parameters on standard input:
% my_script.pl
first_name=fred
last_name=flintstone
occupation='granite miner'
^D
When debugging, you can use quotation marks and the backslash
character to escape spaces and other funny characters in exactly
the way you would in the shell (which isn't surprising since CGI.pm
uses "shellwords.pl" internally). This lets you do this sort of thing:
my_script.pl 'name 1=I am a long value' name\ 2=two\ words
If you run a script that uses CGI.pm from the command line and fail to
provide it with any arguments, it will print out the line
(offline mode: enter name=value pairs on standard input)
then appear to hang. In fact, the library is waiting for you to give
it some parameters to process on its standard input. If you want to
give it some parameters, enter them as shown above, then indicate that
you're finished with input by pressing ^D (^Z on NT/DOS systems). If
you don't want to give CGI.pm parameters, just press ^D.
You can suppress this behavior in any of the following ways:
- 1. Call the script with an empty parameter.
- Example:
my_script.pl ''
- 2. Redirect standard input from /dev/null or an empty file.
- Example:
my_script.pl </dev/null
- 3. Include "-no_debug" in the list of symbols to import on the
"use" line.
- Example:
use CGI qw/:standard -no_debug/;
Table of contents
The Dump() method produces a string consisting of all the query's
name/value pairs formatted nicely as a nested list. This is useful
for debugging purposes:
print $query->Dump
Produces something that looks like this:
<UL>
<LI>name1
<UL>
<LI>value1
<LI>value2
</UL>
<LI>name2
<UL>
<LI>value1
</UL>
</UL>
You can achieve the same effect by incorporating the CGI object directly
into a string, as in:
print "<H2>Current Contents:</H2>\n$query\n";
Some of the more useful environment variables can be fetched
through this interface. The methods are as follows:
- Accept()
- Return a list of MIME types that the remote browser
accepts. If you give this method a single argument
corresponding to a MIME type, as in
$query->Accept('text/html')
, it will return a
floating point value corresponding to the browser's
preference for this type from 0.0 (don't want) to 1.0.
Glob types (e.g. text/*) in the browser's accept list
are handled correctly. Note the capitalization of the initial letter. This avoids
conflict with the Perl built-in accept().
- auth_type()
- Return the authorization type, if protection is active. Example "Basic".
- raw_cookie()
- Returns the "magic cookie" maintained by Netscape 1.1 and higher in a raw
state. You'll probably want to use cookie() instead,
which gives you a high-level interface to the cookie functions.
Called with no parameters, raw_cookie() returns the entire
cookie structure, which may consist of several cookies appended
together (you can recover individual cookies by splitting on the
"; " sequence. Called with the name of a cookie, returns the unescaped
value of the cookie as set by the server. This may be useful for retrieving
cookies that your script did not set.
- path_info()
- Returns additional path information from the script URL.
E.G. fetching
/cgi-bin/your_script/additional/stuff
will
result in $query->path_info()
returning
"/additional/stuff"
. In addition to reading the
path information, you can set it by giving path_info() an
optional string argument. The argument is expected to begin
with a "/". If not present, one will be added for you. The new
path information will be returned by subsequent calls to
path_info(), and will be incorporated into the URL generated by
self_url().
- path_translated()
- As per path_info() but returns the additional
path information translated into a physical path, e.g.
"/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/additional/stuff"
.
You cannot change the path_translated, nor will setting the
additional path information change this value. The reason for
this restriction is that the translation of path information
into a physical path is ordinarily done by the server in a layer
that is inaccessible to CGI scripts.
- query_string()
- Returns a query string suitable for maintaining state.
- referer()
- Return the URL of the page the browser was viewing
prior to fetching your script. Not available for all
browsers.
- remote_addr()
- Return the dotted IP address of the remote host.
- remote_ident()
- Return the identity-checking information from the remote host. Only
available if the remote host has the identd daemon turned on.
- remote_host()
- Returns either the remote host name or IP address.
if the former is unavailable.
- remote_user()
- Return the name given by the remote user during password authorization.
- request_method()
- Return the HTTP method used to request your script's URL, usually
one of
GET, POST,
or HEAD
.
- script_name()
- Return the script name as a partial URL, for self-refering
scripts.
- server_name()
- Return the name of the WWW server the script is running under.
- server_software()
- Return the name and version of the server software.
- virtual_host()
- When using the virtual host feature of some servers, returns the
name of the virtual host the browser is accessing.
- server_port()
- Return the communications port the server is using.
- virtual_port()
- Like server_port() except that it takes virtual hosts into account.
- user_agent()
- Returns the identity of the remote user's browser software,
e.g. "Mozilla/1.1N (Macintosh; I; 68K)"
- user_name()
- Attempts to obtain the remote user's name, using a variety
of environment variables. This only works with older browsers
such as Mosaic. Netscape does not reliably report the user
name!
- http()
- Called with no arguments returns the list of HTTP environment
variables, including such things as HTTP_USER_AGENT,
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE, and HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET, corresponding to the
like-named HTTP header fields in the request. Called with the name of
an HTTP header field, returns its value. Capitalization and the use
of hyphens versus underscores are not significant.
For example, all three of these examples are equivalent:
$requested_language = $q->http('Accept-language');
$requested_language = $q->http('Accept_language');
$requested_language = $q->http('HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE');
- https()
- The same as http(), but operates on the HTTPS environment variables
present when the SSL protocol is in effect. Can be used to determine
whether SSL is turned on.
Table of contents
Netscape browsers versions 1.1 and higher, and all versions of
Internet Explorer support a so-called "cookie" designed to help
maintain state within a browser session. CGI.pm has several methods
that support cookies.
A cookie is a name=value pair much like the named parameters in a CGI
query string. CGI scripts create one or more cookies and send
them to the browser in the HTTP header. The browser maintains a list
of cookies that belong to a particular Web server, and returns them
to the CGI script during subsequent interactions.
In addition to the required name=value pair, each cookie has several
optional attributes:
- an expiration time
- This is a time/date string (in a special GMT format) that indicates
when a cookie expires. The cookie will be saved and returned to your
script until this expiration date is reached if the user exits
the browser and restarts it. If an expiration date isn't specified, the cookie
will remain active until the user quits the browser.
Negative expiration times (e.g. "-1d") cause some browsers
to delete the cookie from its persistent store. This is a
poorly documented feature.
- a domain
- This is a partial or complete domain name for which the cookie is
valid. The browser will return the cookie to any host that matches
the partial domain name. For example, if you specify a domain name
of ".capricorn.com", then the browser will return the cookie to
Web servers running on any of the machines "www.capricorn.com",
"www2.capricorn.com", "feckless.capricorn.com", etc. Domain names
must contain at least two periods to prevent attempts to match
on top level domains like ".edu". If no domain is specified, then
the browser will only return the cookie to servers on the host the
cookie originated from.
- a path
- If you provide a cookie path attribute, the browser will check it
against your script's URL before returning the cookie. For example,
if you specify the path "/cgi-bin", then the cookie will be returned
to each of the scripts "/cgi-bin/tally.pl", "/cgi-bin/order.pl",
and "/cgi-bin/customer_service/complain.pl", but not to the script
"/cgi-private/site_admin.pl". By default, path is set to "/", which
causes the cookie to be sent to any CGI script on your site.
- a "secure" flag
- If the "secure" attribute is set, the cookie will only be sent to your
script if the CGI request is occurring on a secure channel, such as SSL.
The interface to HTTP cookies is the cookie() method:
$cookie = $query->cookie(-name=>'sessionID',
-value=>'xyzzy',
-expires=>'+1h',
-path=>'/cgi-bin/database',
-domain=>'.capricorn.org',
-secure=>1);
print $query->header(-cookie=>$cookie);
cookie() creates a new cookie. Its parameters include:
- -name
- The name of the cookie (required). This can be any string at all.
Although Netscape limits its cookie names to non-whitespace
alphanumeric characters, CGI.pm removes this restriction by escaping
and unescaping cookies behind the scenes.
- -value
- The value of the cookie. This can be any scalar value,
array reference, or even associative array reference. For example,
you can store an entire associative array into a cookie this way:
$cookie=$query->cookie(-name=>'family information',
-value=>\%childrens_ages);
- -path
- The optional partial path for which this cookie will be valid, as described
above.
- -domain
- The optional partial domain for which this cookie will be valid, as described
above.
- -expires
- The optional expiration date for this cookie. The format is as described
in the section on the header() method:
"+1h" one hour from now
- -secure
- If set to true, this cookie will only be used within a secure
SSL session.
The cookie created by cookie() must be incorporated into the HTTP
header within the string returned by the header() method:
print $query->header(-cookie=>$my_cookie);
To create multiple cookies, give header() an array reference:
$cookie1 = $query->cookie(-name=>'riddle_name',
-value=>"The Sphynx's Question");
$cookie2 = $query->cookie(-name=>'answers',
-value=>\%answers);
print $query->header(-cookie=>[$cookie1,$cookie2]);
To retrieve a cookie, request it by name by calling cookie()
method without the -value parameter:
use CGI;
$query = new CGI;
%answers = $query->cookie('answers');
# $query->cookie(-name=>'answers') works too!
To retrieve the names of all cookies passed to your script, call
cookie() without any parameters. This allows you to
iterate through all cookies:
foreach $name ($query->cookie()) {
print $query->cookie($name);
}
The cookie and CGI namespaces are separate. If you have a parameter
named 'answers' and a cookie named 'answers', the values retrieved by
param() and cookie() are independent of each other. However, it's
simple to turn a CGI parameter into a cookie, and vice-versa:
# turn a CGI parameter into a cookie
$c=$q->cookie(-name=>'answers',-value=>[$q->param('answers')]);
# vice-versa
$q->param(-name=>'answers',-value=>[$q->cookie('answers')]);
See the cookie.cgi example script
for some ideas on how to use cookies effectively.
NOTE: There are some limitations on cookies. Here is
what RFC2109, section 6.3, states:
Practical user agent implementations have limits on the number and
size of cookies that they can store. In general, user agents' cookie
support should have no fixed limits. They should strive to store as
many frequently-used cookies as possible. Furthermore, general-use
user agents should provide each of the following minimum capabilities
individually, although not necessarily simultaneously:
* at least 300 cookies
* at least 4096 bytes per cookie (as measured by the size of the
characters that comprise the cookie non-terminal in the syntax
description of the Set-Cookie header)
* at least 20 cookies per unique host or domain name
User agents created for specific purposes or for limited-capacity
devices should provide at least 20 cookies of 4096 bytes, to ensure
that the user can interact with a session-based origin server.
The information in a Set-Cookie response header must be retained in
its entirety. If for some reason there is inadequate space to store
the cookie, it must be discarded, not truncated.
Applications should use as few and as small cookies as possible, and
they should cope gracefully with the loss of a cookie.
Unfortunately, some browsers appear to have limits that are more
restrictive than those given in the RFC. If you need to store a lot
of information, it's probably better to create a unique session ID,
store it in a cookie, and use the session ID to locate an external
file/database saved on the server's side of the connection.
Table of contents
CGI.pm contains support for HTML
frames, a feature of Netscape 2.0 and higher, and Internet
Explorer 3.0 and higher. Frames are supported in two ways:
- You can provide the name of a new or preexisting frame in the startform()
and start_multipart_form() methods using the
-target
parameter. When the form is submitted, the output
will be redirected to the indicated frame:
print $query->start_form(-target=>'result_frame');
- You can direct the output of a script into a new window or into a
preexisting named frame by providing the name of the frame as a
-target
argument in the header method. For example,
the following code will pop up a new window and display the script's
output:
$query = new CGI;
print $query->header(-target=>'_blank');
This feature is a non-standard extension to HTTP which is supported
by Netscape browsers, but not by Internet Explorer.
Using frames effectively can be tricky. To create a proper frameset in which
the query and response are displayed side-by-side requires you to
divide the script into three functional sections. The first section should
create the <frameset> declaration and exit. The second section is
responsible for creating the query form and directing it into the one
frame. The third section is responsible for creating the response and directing
it into a different frame.
The examples directory contains a script called
popup.cgi that demonstrates a simple
popup window. frameset.cgi provides
a skeleton script for creating side-by-side query/result frame sets.
Netscape versions 2.0 and higher incorporate an interpreted language
called JavaScript. Internet Explorer, 3.0 and higher, supports a
closely-related dialect called JScript. JavaScript isn't the same as
Java, and certainly isn't at all the same as Perl, which is a great
pity. JavaScript allows you to programatically change the contents of
fill-out forms, create new windows, and pop up dialog box from within
Netscape itself. From the point of view of CGI scripting, JavaScript
is quite useful for validating fill-out forms prior to submitting
them.
You'll need to know JavaScript in order to use it. The
Netscape JavaScript manual contains
a good tutorial and reference guide to the JavaScript programming
language.
The usual way to use JavaScript is to define a set of functions in
a <SCRIPT> block inside the HTML header and then to register
event handlers in the various
elements of the page. Events include such things as the mouse passing
over a form element, a button being clicked, the contents of a text
field changing, or a form being submitted. When an event occurs
that involves an element that has registered an event handler, its
associated JavaScript code gets called.
The elements that can register event handlers include the <BODY>
of an HTML document, hypertext links, all the various elements of a
fill-out form, and the form itself. There are a large number of
events, and each applies only to the elements for which it is
relevant. Here is a partial list:
- onLoad
- The browser is loading the current document. Valid in:
- The HTML <BODY> section only.
- onUnload
- The browser is closing the current page or frame. Valid for:
- The HTML <BODY> section only.
- onSubmit
- The user has pressed the submit button of a form. This event
happens just before the form is submitted, and your function
can return a value of false in order to abort the
submission. Valid for:
- onClick
- The mouse has clicked on an item in a fill-out form.
Valid for:
- Buttons (including submit, reset, and image buttons)
- Checkboxes
- Radio buttons
- onChange
- The user has changed the contents of a field.
Valid for:
- Text fields
- Text areas
- Password fields
- File fields
- Popup Menus
- Scrolling lists
- onFocus
- The user has selected a field to work with. Valid for:
- Text fields
- Text areas
- Password fields
- File fields
- Popup Menus
- Scrolling lists
- onBlur
- The user has deselected a field (gone to work somewhere
else). Valid for:
- Text fields
- Text areas
- Password fields
- File fields
- Popup Menus
- Scrolling lists
- onSelect
- The user has changed the part of a text field that is
selected. Valid for:
- Text fields
- Text areas
- Password fields
- File fields
- onMouseOver
- The mouse has moved over an element.
- Text fields
- Text areas
- Password fields
- File fields
- Popup Menus
- Scrolling lists
- onMouseOut
- The mouse has moved off an element.
- Text fields
- Text areas
- Password fields
- File fields
- Popup Menus
- Scrolling lists
In order to register a JavaScript event handler with an HTML element,
just use the event name as a parameter when you call the
corresponding CGI method. For example, to have your
validateAge()
JavaScript code executed every time the
textfield named "age" changes, generate the field like this:
print $q->textfield(-name=>'age',-onChange=>"validateAge(this)");
This example assumes that you've already declared the
validateAge()
function by incorporating it into
a <SCRIPT> block. The CGI.pm
start_html() method provides a convenient way
to create this section.
Similarly, you can create a form that checks itself over for
consistency and alerts the user if some essential value is missing by
creating it this way:
print $q->startform(-onSubmit=>"validateMe(this)");
See the javascript.cgi script for a
demonstration of how this all works.
The JavaScript "standard" is still evolving, which means that new
handlers may be added in the future, or may be present in some
browsers and not in others. You do not need to wait for a new version
of CGI.pm to use new event handlers. Just like any other tag
attribute they will produce syntactically correct HTML. For instance,
if Microsoft invents a new event handler called
onInterplanetaryDisaster, you can install a handler for it with:
print button(-name=>'bail out',-onInterPlaneteryDisaster=>"alert('uh oh')");
Table of contents
CGI.pm has limited support for HTML3's cascading style sheets (css).
To incorporate a stylesheet into your document, pass the
start_html() method a -style
parameter. The value of this parameter may be a scalar, in which case
it is incorporated directly into a <STYLE> section, or it may be
a hash reference. In the latter case you should provide the hash with
one or more of -src or -code.
-src points to a URL where an externally-defined
stylesheet can be found. -code points to a scalar
value to be incorporated into a <STYLE> section. Style
definitions in -code override similarly-named ones in
-src, hence the name "cascading."
You may also specify the MIME type of the stylesheet by including an
optional -type parameter in the hash pointed to by
-style. If not specified, the type defaults to
'text/css'.
To refer to a style within the body of your document, add the
-class parameter to any HTML element:
print h1({-class=>'Fancy'},'Welcome to the Party');
Or define styles on the fly with the -style parameter:
print h1({-style=>'Color: red;'},'Welcome to Hell');
You may also use the new span() element to apply a
style to a section of text:
print span({-style=>'Color: red;'},
h1('Welcome to Hell'),
"Where did that handbasket get to?"
);
Note that you must import the ":html3" definitions to get the
span() and style() methods.
You won't be able to do much with this unless you understand the CSS
specification. A more intuitive subclassable library for cascading
style sheets in Perl is in the works, but until then, please
read the CSS specification at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Style/
to find out how to use these features. Here's a final example to get
you started.
use CGI qw/:standard :html3/;
#here's a stylesheet incorporated directly into the page
$newStyle=<<END;
<!--
P.Tip {
margin-right: 50pt;
margin-left: 50pt;
color: red;
}
P.Alert {
font-size: 30pt;
font-family: sans-serif;
color: red;
}
-->
END
print header();
print start_html( -title=>'CGI with Style',
-style=>{-src=>'http://www.capricorn.com/style/st1.css',
-code=>$newStyle}
);
print h1('CGI with Style'),
p({-class=>'Tip'},
"Better read the cascading style sheet spec before playing with this!"
),
span({-style=>'color: magenta'},"Look Mom, no hands!",
p(),
"Whooo wee!"
);
print end_html;
Pass an array reference to -code or -srcin order to
incorporate multiple stylesheets into your document.
Should you wish to incorporate a verbatim stylesheet that includes
arbitrary formatting in the header, you may pass a -verbatim tag to
the -style hash, as follows:
print $q->start_html (-STYLE => {-verbatim => '@import
url("/server-common/css/'.$cssFile.'");',
-src => '/server-common/css/core.css'});
This will generate HTML like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
href="/server-common/css/core.css">
<style type="text/css">
@import url("/server-common/css/main.css");
</style>
Any additional arguments passed in the -style value will be
incorporated into the <link> tag. For example:
start_html(-style=>{-src=>['/styles/print.css','/styles/layout.css'],
-media => 'all'});
This will give:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/styles/print.css" media="all"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/styles/layout.css" media="all"/>
To make more complicated <link> tags, use the Link() function
and pass it to start_html() in the -head argument, as in:
@h = (Link({-rel=>'stylesheet',-type=>'text/css',-src=>'/ss/ss.css',-media=>'all'}),
Link({-rel=>'stylesheet',-type=>'text/css',-src=>'/ss/fred.css',-media=>'paper'}));
print start_html({-head=>\@h})
Table of contents
NPH, or "no-parsed-header", scripts bypass the server completely by
sending the complete HTTP header directly to the browser. This has
slight performance benefits, but is of most use for taking advantage
of HTTP extensions that are not directly supported by your server,
such as server push and PICS headers.
Servers use a variety of conventions for designating CGI scripts as
NPH. IIS and many Unix servers look at the beginning of the script's
name for the prefix "nph-".
CGI.pm supports NPH scripts with a special NPH mode. When in this
mode, CGI.pm will output the necessary extra header information when
the header()
and redirect()
methods are
called.
Important: If you use the Microsoft Internet
Information Server, you must designate your script as an NPH
script. Otherwise many of CGI.pm's features, such as redirection and
the ability to output non-HTML files, will fail. However, after
applying Service Pack 6, NPH scripts do not work at all on
IIS without a special patch from Microsoft. See Knowledgebase
article Q280/3/31 Non-Parsed Headers Stripped From CGI Applications
That Have nph- Prefix in Name
There are a number of ways to put CGI.pm into NPH mode:
- In the use statement:
- Simply add "-nph" to the list of symbols to be imported into
your script:
use CGI qw(:standard -nph)
- By calling the nph() method:
- Call nph() with a non-zero parameter at any
point after using CGI.pm in your program.
CGI->nph(1)
- By using -nph parameters in the
header() and redirect()
statements:
-
print $q->header(-nph=>1);
A Script that Saves Some Information to a File and Restores It
This script will save its state to a file of the user's choosing when the
"save" button is pressed, and will restore its state when the "restore" button
is pressed. Notice that it's very important to check the file name
for shell metacharacters so that the script doesn't inadvertently open up a
command or overwrite someone's file. For this to work, the script's current
directory must be writable by "nobody".
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI;
$query = new CGI;
print $query->header;
print $query->start_html("Save and Restore Example");
print "<H1>Save and Restore Example</H1>\n";
# Here's where we take action on the previous request
&save_parameters($query) if $query->param('action') eq 'save';
$query = &restore_parameters($query) if $query->param('action') eq 'restore';
# Here's where we create the form
print $query->startform;
print "Popup 1: ",$query->popup_menu('popup1',['eenie','meenie','minie']),"\n";
print "Popup 2: ",$query->popup_menu('popup2',['et','lux','perpetua']),"\n";
print "<P>";
print "Save/restore state from file: ",$query->textfield('savefile','state.sav'),"\n";
print "<P>";
print $query->submit('action','save'),$query->submit('action','restore');
print $query->submit('action','usual query');
print $query->endform;
# Here we print out a bit at the end
print $query->end_html;
sub save_parameters {
local($query) = @_;
local($filename) = &clean_name($query->param('savefile'));
if (open(FILE,">$filename")) {
$query->save(\*FILE);
close FILE;
print "<STRONG>State has been saved to file $filename</STRONG>\n";
} else {
print "<STRONG>Error:</STRONG> couldn't write to file $filename: $!\n";
}
}
sub restore_parameters {
local($query) = @_;
local($filename) = &clean_name($query->param('savefile'));
if (open(FILE,$filename)) {
$query = new CGI(\*FILE); # Throw out the old query, replace it with a new one
close FILE;
print "<STRONG>State has been restored from file $filename</STRONG>\n";
} else {
print "<STRONG>Error:</STRONG> couldn't restore file $filename: $!\n";
}
return $query;
}
# Very important subroutine -- get rid of all the naughty
# metacharacters from the file name. If there are, we
# complain bitterly and die.
sub clean_name {
local($name) = @_;
unless ($name=~/^[\w\._-]+$/) {
print "<STRONG>$name has naughty characters. Only ";
print "alphanumerics are allowed. You can't use absolute names.</STRONG>";
die "Attempt to use naughty characters";
}
return $name;
}
If you use the CGI save() and restore() methods a lot, you might be
interested in the Boulderio
file format. It's a way of transferring semi-strucured data from the
standard output of one program to the standard input of the next. It
comes with a simple Perl database that allows you to store and
retrieve records from a DBM or DB_File database, and is compatible
with the format used by save() and restore(). You can get more
information on Boulderio from:
http://stein.cshl.org/software/boulder/
A Script that Uses Self-Referencing URLs to Jump to Internal Links
(Without losing form information).
Many people have experienced problems with internal links on pages that have
forms. Jumping around within the document causes the state of the form to be
reset. A partial solution is to use the self_url() method to generate a link
that preserves state information. This script illustrates how this works.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI;
$query = new CGI;
# We generate a regular HTML file containing a very long list
# and a popup menu that does nothing except to show that we
# don't lose the state information.
print $query->header;
print $query->start_html("Internal Links Example");
print "<H1>Internal Links Example</H1>\n";
print "<A NAME=\"start\"></A>\n"; # an anchor point at the top
# pick a default starting value;
$query->param('amenu','FOO1') unless $query->param('amenu');
print $query->startform;
print $query->popup_menu('amenu',[('FOO1'..'FOO9')]);
print $query->submit,$query->endform;
# We create a long boring list for the purposes of illustration.
$myself = $query->self_url;
print "<OL>\n";
for (1..100) {
print qq{<LI>List item #$_<A HREF="$myself#start">Jump to top</A>\n};
}
print "</OL>\n";
print $query->end_html;
Multiple forms on the same page
There's no particular trick to this. Just remember to close one form before
you open another one. You can reuse the same query object or create a new one.
Either technique works.
There is, however, a problem with maintaining the states of multiple forms. Because
the browser only sends your script the parameters from the form in which the submit
button was pressed, the state of all the other forms will be lost. One way to get
around this, suggested in this example, is to use hidden fields to pass as much
information as possible regardless of which form the user submits.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI;
$query=new CGI;
print $query->header;
print $query->start_html('Multiple forms');
print "<H1>Multiple forms</H1>\n";
# form 1
print "<HR>\n";
print $query->startform;
print $query->textfield('text1'),$query->submit('submit1');
print $query->hidden('text2'); # pass information from the other form
print $query->endform;
print "<HR>\n";
# form 2
print $query->startform;
print $query->textfield('text2'),$query->submit('submit2');
print $query->hidden('text1'); # pass information from the other form
print $query->endform;
print "<HR>\n";
print $query->end_html;
Table of contents
CGI.pm uses various tricks to work in both an object-oriented and
function-oriented fashion. It uses even more tricks to load quickly,
despite the fact that it is a humungous module. These tricks may get
in your way when you attempt to subclass CGI.pm.
If you use standard subclassing techniques and restrict yourself to
using CGI.pm and its subclasses in the object-oriented manner, you'll
have no problems. However, if you wish to use the function-oriented
calls with your subclass, follow this model:
package MySubclass;
use vars qw(@ISA $VERSION);
require CGI;
@ISA = qw(CGI);
$VERSION = 1.0;
$CGI::DefaultClass = __PACKAGE__;
$AutoloadClass = 'CGI';
sub new {
....
}
1;
The first special trick is to set the CGI package variable
$CGI::DefaultClass to the name of the module you are defining. If you
are using perl 5.004 or higher, you can use the special token
"__PACKAGE__" to retrieve the name of the current module. Otherwise,
just hard code the name of the module. This variable tells CGI what
type of default object to create when called in the function-oriented
manner.
The second trick is to set the package variable $AutoloadClass to the
string "CGI". This tells the CGI autoloader where to look for
functions that are not defined. If you wish to override CGI's
autoloader, set this to the name of your own package.
More information on extending CGI.pm can be found in my new book,
The Official Guide to CGI.pm, which was published by John
Wiley & Sons in April 1998. Check out the book's Web site, which
contains multiple useful coding examples.
Table of contents
FastCGI
FastCGI is a protocol invented by
OpenMarket that markedly speeds up CGI scripts under certain
circumstances. It works by opening up the script at server startup
time and redirecting the script's IO to a Unix domain socket. Every
time a new CGI request comes in, the script is passed new parameters
to work on. This allows the script to perform all its time-consuming
operations at initialization time (including loading CGI.pm!) and then
respond quickly to new requests.
FastCGI modules are available for the Apache and NCSA servers as well
as for OpenMarket's own server. In order to use FastCGI with Perl you
have to run a specially-modified version of the Perl interpreter.
Precompiled Binaries and a patch kit are all available on OpenMarket's
FastCGI web site.
To use FastCGI with CGI.pm, change your scripts as follows:
Old Script
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI qw(:standard);
print header,
start_html("CGI Script"),
h1("CGI Script"),
"Not much to see here",
hr,
address(a({href=>'/'},"home page"),
end_html;
New Script
#!/usr/local/fcgi/bin/perl
use CGI::Fast qw(:standard);
# Do time-consuming initialization up here.
while (new CGI::Fast) {
print header,
start_html("CGI Script"),
h1("CGI Script"),
"Not much to see here",
hr,
address(a({href=>'/'},"home page"),
end_html;
}
That's all there is to it. The param() method, form-generation, HTML
shortcuts, etc., all work the way you expect.
mod_perl
mod_perl is a
module for the Apache Web server that embeds a Perl interpreter into
the Web server. It can be run in either of two modes:
- Server launches a new Perl interpreter every time it needs to
interpret a Perl script. This speeds CGI scripts significantly
because there's no overhead for launching a new Perl process.
- A "fast" mode in which the server launches your script at
initialization time. You can
load all your favorite modules (like CGI.pm!) at initialization time,
greatly speeding things up.
CGI.pm works with mod_perl, versions 0.95 and higher. If you use Perl
5.003_93 or higher, your scripts should run without any modifications.
Users with earlier versions of Perl should use the
CGI::Apache module instead. This example shows the
change needed:
Old Script
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI qw(:standard);
print header,
start_html("CGI Script"),
h1("CGI Script"),
"Not much to see here",
hr,
address(a({href=>'/'},"home page"),
end_html;
New Script
#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI::Apache qw(:standard);
print header,
start_html("CGI Script"),
h1("CGI Script"),
"Not much to see here",
hr,
address(a({href=>'/'},"home page"),
end_html;
}
Configuration note: When using CGI.pm with mod_perl
it is not necessary to enable the
PerlSendHeader directive. This is handled automatically by
CGI.pm and by Apache::Registry.
mod_perl comes with a small wrapper library named
CGI::Switch that selects dynamically between using CGI
and CGI::Apache. This library is no longer needed. However users of
CGI::Switch can continue to use it without risk. Note that the
"simple" interface to the CGI.pm functions does not work with
CGI::Switch. You'll have to use the object-oriented versions (or use
the sfio version of Perl!)
If you use CGI.pm in many of your mod_perl scripts, you may want to
preload CGI.pm and its methods at server startup time. To do this,
add the following line to httpd.conf:
PerlScript /home/httpd/conf/startup.pl
Create the file /home/httpd/conf/startup.pl and put in it all the
modules you want to load. Include CGI.pm among them and call its compile() method to precompile its autoloaded
methods.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI ();
CGI->compile(':all');
Change the path to the startup script according to your preferences.
Table of contents
To make it easier to convert older scripts that use cgi-lib.pl,
CGI.pm provides a CGI::ReadParse() call that
is compatible with cgi-lib.pl's ReadParse()
subroutine.
When you call ReadParse(), CGI.pm creates an associative array named
%in
that contains the named CGI parameters. Multi-valued
parameters are separated by "\0" characters in exactly the same way
cgi-lib.pl does it. The function result is the number of parameters
parsed. You can use this to determine whether the script is being
called from a fill out form or not.
To port an old script to CGI.pm, you have to make just two changes:
Old Script
require "cgi-lib.pl";
ReadParse();
print "The price of your purchase is $in{price}.\n";
New Script
use CGI qw(:cgi-lib);
ReadParse();
print "The price of your purchase is $in{price}.\n";
Like cgi-lib's ReadParse, pass a variable glob in
order to use a different variable than the default "%in":
ReadParse(*Q);
@partners = split("\0",$Q{'golf_partners'});
The associative array created by CGI::ReadParse() contains
a special key 'CGI', which returns the CGI query object
itself:
ReadParse();
$q = $in{CGI};
print $q->textfield(-name=>'wow',
-value=>'does this really work?');
This allows you to add the more interesting features
of CGI.pm to your old scripts without rewriting them completely.
As an added benefit, the %in variable is
actually tie()
'd to the CGI object. Changing the
CGI object using param() will dynamically
change %in, and vice-versa.
cgi-lib.pl's @in
and $in
variables are
not supported. In addition, the extended version of
ReadParse() that allows you to spool uploaded files to disk is not
available. You are strongly encouraged to use CGI.pm's file upload
interface instead.
See cgi-lib_porting.html for more
details on porting cgi-lib.pl scripts to CGI.pm.
The file upload feature doesn't work with every combination of browser
and server. The various versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer on
the Macintosh, Unix and Windows platforms don't all seem to implement
file uploading in exactly the same way. I've tried to make CGI.pm
work with all versions on all platforms, but I keep getting reports
from people of instances that break the file upload feature.
Known problems include:
- Large file uploads may fail when using SSL version 2.0. This
affects the Netscape servers and possibly others that use the SSL
library. I have received reports that WebSite Pro suffers from
this problem. This is a documented bug in the
Netscape implementation of SSL and not a problem with CGI.pm.
- If you try to upload a directory path with Unix
Netscape, the browser will hang until you hit the "stop" button.
I haven't tried to figure this one out since I think it's dumb
of Netscape to allow this to happen at all.
- If you create the CGI object in one package (e.g. "main") and
then obtain the filehandle in a different package (e.g. "foo"),
the filehandle will be accessible through "main" but not "foo".
In order to use the filehandle, try the following contortion:
$file = $query->param('file to upload');
$file = "main::$file";
...
I haven't found a way to determine the correct caller in this
situation. I might add a readFile() method to CGI if this
problem bothers enough people.
The main technical challenge of handling file uploads is that
it potentially involves sending more data to the CGI script
than the script can hold in main memory. For this reason
CGI.pm creates temporary files in
either the /usr/tmp
or the /tmp
directory. These temporary files
have names like CGItemp125421
, and should be
deleted automatically.
Frequent Problems
When you run a script from the command line, it says "offline
mode: enter name=value pairs on standard input". What do I do
now?
This is a prompt to enter some CGI parameters for the purposes of
debugging. You can now type in some parameters like this:
first_name=Fred
last_name=Flintstone
city=Bedrock
End the list by typing a control-D (or control-Z on DOS/Windows
systems).
If you want to run a CGI script from a script or batch file, and don't
want this behavior, just pass it an empty parameter list like this:
my_script.pl ''
This will work too on Unix systems:
my_script.pl </dev/null
Another option is to use the "-no_debug" pragma when you "use"
CGI.pm. This will suppress command-line debugging completely:
use CGI qw/:standard -no_debug/;
CGI.pm breaks when you use "use integer"
Due to problems that integer.pm has with unary negation, calls to
CGI.pm that use the -arg=>value format will break if you load the
integer.pm module. This is fixed in Perl 5.005_61 and up.
A workaround is to put all arguments in quotes:
'-arg'=>'value'
You can't retrieve the name of the uploaded file
using the param() method
Most likely the remote user isn't using version 2.0 (or higher)
of Netscape. Alternatively she just isn't filling in the form
completely.
When you accidentally try to upload a directory name,
the browser hangs
This seems to be a Netscape browser problem. It starts to
upload junk to the script, then hangs. You can abort by
hitting the "stop" button.
You can read the name of the uploaded file, but can't
retrieve the data
First check that you've told CGI.pm to
use the new multipart/form-data
scheme. If it still isn't working, there may be a problem
with the temporary files that CGI.pm needs to create in
order to read in the (potentially very large) uploaded files.
Internally, CGI.pm tries to create temporary files with
names similar to CGITemp123456
in a temporary
directory. To find a suitable directory it first looks
for /usr/tmp
and then for /tmp
.
If it can't find either of these directories, it tries
for the current directory, which is usually the same
directory that the script resides in.
If you're on a non-Unix system you may need to modify CGI.pm to point
at a suitable temporary directory. This directory must be writable by
the user ID under which the server runs (usually "nobody") and must
have sufficient capacity to handle large file uploads. Open up
CGI.pm, and find the line:
package TempFile;
foreach ('/usr/tmp','/tmp') {
do {$TMPDIRECTORY = $_; last} if -d $_ && -w _;
}
Modify the foreach() line to contain a series of one or more
directories to store temporary files in.
Alternatively, you can just skip the search entirely and force CGI.pm
to store its temporary files in some logical location. Do this at the
top of your script with a line like this one:
$TempFile::TMPDIRECTORY='/WWW_ROOT';
On Windows Systems, the temporary file is never deleted, but hangs
around in \temp
, taking up space.
Be sure to close the filehandle before your program exits. In fact,
close the file as soon as you're finished with it, because the file
will end up hanging around if the script later crashes.
Unix users don't have this problem, because well designed operating
systems make it possible to delete a file without closing it.
When you press the "back" button, the same page is loaded,
not the previous one.
Netscape 2.0's history list gets confused when processing multipart
forms. If the script generates different pages for the form and the
results, hitting the "back" button doesn't always return you to the
previous page; instead Netscape reloads the current page. This happens
even if you don't use an upload file field in your form.
A workaround for this is to use additional path information to trick
Netscape into thinking that the form and the response have different
URLs. I recommend giving each form a sequence number and bumping the
sequence up by one each time the form is accessed:
my($s) = $query->path_info=~/(\d+)/; # get sequence
$s++; #bump it up
# Trick Netscape into thinking it's loading a new script:
print $q->start_multipart_form(-action=>$q->script_name . "/$s");
You can't find the temporary file that CGI.pm creates
You're encouraged to copy the data into your own file by reading from the
file handle that CGI.pm provides you with. In the future there
may be no temporary file at all, just a pipe. However, for now, if
you really want to get at the temp file, you can retrieve its path
using the tmpFileName() method. Be sure
to move the temporary file elsewhere in the file system if you don't
want it to be automatically deleted when CGI.pm exits.
CGI.pm provides four simple functions for producing multipart
documents of the type needed to implement server push. To import
these into your namespace, you must import the ":push" set. You are
also advised to put the script into NPH mode and to set $| to 1 to
avoid buffering problems.
Here is a simple script that demonstrates server push:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI qw/:push -nph/;
$| = 1;
print multipart_init(-boundary=>'----------------here we go!');
foreach (0 .. 4) {
print multipart_start(-type=>'text/plain'),
"The current time is ",scalar(localtime),"\n";
if ($_ < 4) {
print multipart_end;
} else {
print multipart_final;
}
sleep 1;
}
This script initializes server push by calling
multipart_init(). It then enters a loop in
which it begins a new multipart section by calling
multipart_start(), prints the current local time, and
ends a multipart section with multipart_end(). It then