=head1 NAME
-perlfaq9 - Networking ($Revision: 1.26 $, $Date: 1999/05/23 16:08:30 $)
+perlfaq9 - Networking ($Revision: 1.24 $, $Date: 2005/10/13 19:43:13 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
This section deals with questions related to networking, the internet,
and a few on the web.
-=head2 My CGI script runs from the command line but not the browser. (500 Server Error)
+=head2 What is the correct form of response from a CGI script?
-If you can demonstrate that you've read the following FAQs and that
-your problem isn't something simple that can be easily answered, you'll
-probably receive a courteous and useful reply to your question if you
-post it on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi (if it's something to do
-with HTTP, HTML, or the CGI protocols). Questions that appear to be Perl
-questions but are really CGI ones that are posted to comp.lang.perl.misc
-may not be so well received.
+(Alan Flavell <flavell+www@a5.ph.gla.ac.uk> answers...)
+
+The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) specifies a software interface between
+a program ("CGI script") and a web server (HTTPD). It is not specific
+to Perl, and has its own FAQs and tutorials, and usenet group,
+comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
+
+The CGI specification is outlined in an informational RFC:
+http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3875
-The useful FAQs and related documents are:
+Other relevant documentation listed in: http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
- CGI FAQ
- http://www.webthing.com/tutorials/cgifaq.html
+These Perl FAQs very selectively cover some CGI issues. However, Perl
+programmers are strongly advised to use the CGI.pm module, to take care
+of the details for them.
- Web FAQ
- http://www.boutell.com/faq/
+The similarity between CGI response headers (defined in the CGI
+specification) and HTTP response headers (defined in the HTTP
+specification, RFC2616) is intentional, but can sometimes be confusing.
- WWW Security FAQ
- http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
+The CGI specification defines two kinds of script: the "Parsed Header"
+script, and the "Non Parsed Header" (NPH) script. Check your server
+documentation to see what it supports. "Parsed Header" scripts are
+simpler in various respects. The CGI specification allows any of the
+usual newline representations in the CGI response (it's the server's
+job to create an accurate HTTP response based on it). So "\n" written in
+text mode is technically correct, and recommended. NPH scripts are more
+tricky: they must put out a complete and accurate set of HTTP
+transaction response headers; the HTTP specification calls for records
+to be terminated with carriage-return and line-feed, i.e ASCII \015\012
+written in binary mode.
- HTTP Spec
- http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Protocols/HTTP/
+Using CGI.pm gives excellent platform independence, including EBCDIC
+systems. CGI.pm selects an appropriate newline representation
+($CGI::CRLF) and sets binmode as appropriate.
+
+=head2 My CGI script runs from the command line but not the browser. (500 Server Error)
+
+Several things could be wrong. You can go through the "Troubleshooting
+Perl CGI scripts" guide at
+
+ http://www.perl.org/troubleshooting_CGI.html
+
+If, after that, you can demonstrate that you've read the FAQs and that
+your problem isn't something simple that can be easily answered, you'll
+probably receive a courteous and useful reply to your question if you
+post it on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi (if it's something to do
+with HTTP or the CGI protocols). Questions that appear to be Perl
+questions but are really CGI ones that are posted to comp.lang.perl.misc
+are not so well received.
- HTML Spec
- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/
- http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/
+The useful FAQs, related documents, and troubleshooting guides are
+listed in the CGI Meta FAQ:
- CGI Spec
- http://www.w3.org/CGI/
+ http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
- CGI Security FAQ
- http://www.go2net.com/people/paulp/cgi-security/safe-cgi.txt
=head2 How can I get better error messages from a CGI program?
If you want a more complete solution, see the 3-stage striphtml
program in
-http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/striphtml.gz
+http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/striphtml.gz
.
Here are some tricky cases that you should think about when picking
=head2 How do I extract URLs?
-A quick but imperfect approach is
+You can easily extract all sorts of URLs from HTML with
+C<HTML::SimpleLinkExtor> which handles anchors, images, objects,
+frames, and many other tags that can contain a URL. If you need
+anything more complex, you can create your own subclass of
+C<HTML::LinkExtor> or C<HTML::Parser>. You might even use
+C<HTML::SimpleLinkExtor> as an example for something specifically
+suited to your needs.
+
+You can use URI::Find to extract URLs from an arbitrary text document.
+
+Less complete solutions involving regular expressions can save
+you a lot of processing time if you know that the input is simple. One
+solution from Tom Christiansen runs 100 times faster than most
+module based approaches but only extracts URLs from anchors where the first
+attribute is HREF and there are no other attributes.
+
+ #!/usr/bin/perl -n00
+ # qxurl - tchrist@perl.com
+ print "$2\n" while m{
+ < \s*
+ A \s+ HREF \s* = \s* (["']) (.*?) \1
+ \s* >
+ }gsix;
- #!/usr/bin/perl -n00
- # qxurl - tchrist@perl.com
- print "$2\n" while m{
- < \s*
- A \s+ HREF \s* = \s* (["']) (.*?) \1
- \s* >
- }gsix;
-
-This version does not adjust relative URLs, understand alternate
-bases, deal with HTML comments, deal with HREF and NAME attributes
-in the same tag, understand extra qualifiers like TARGET, or accept
-URLs themselves as arguments. It also runs about 100x faster than a
-more "complete" solution using the LWP suite of modules, such as the
-http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/xurl.gz program.
=head2 How do I download a file from the user's machine? How do I open a file on another machine?
-In the context of an HTML form, you can use what's known as
-B<multipart/form-data> encoding. The CGI.pm module (available from
-CPAN) supports this in the start_multipart_form() method, which isn't
-the same as the startform() method.
+In this case, download means to use the file upload feature of HTML
+forms. You allow the web surfer to specify a file to send to your web
+server. To you it looks like a download, and to the user it looks
+like an upload. No matter what you call it, you do it with what's
+known as B<multipart/form-data> encoding. The CGI.pm module (which
+comes with Perl as part of the Standard Library) supports this in the
+start_multipart_form() method, which isn't the same as the startform()
+method.
+
+See the section in the CGI.pm documentation on file uploads for code
+examples and details.
=head2 How do I make a pop-up menu in HTML?
=head2 How do I automate an HTML form submission?
+If you are doing something complex, such as moving through many pages
+and forms or a web site, you can use C<WWW::Mechanize>. See its
+documentation for all the details.
+
If you're submitting values using the GET method, create a URL and encode
the form using the C<query_form> method:
=head2 How do I decode or create those %-encodings on the web?
-Here's an example of decoding:
- $string = "http://altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what=news&fmt=.&q=%2Bcgi-bin+%2Bperl.exe";
- $string =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9]{2})/chr(hex($1))/ge;
+If you are writing a CGI script, you should be using the CGI.pm module
+that comes with perl, or some other equivalent module. The CGI module
+automatically decodes queries for you, and provides an escape()
+function to handle encoding.
+
+
+The best source of detailed information on URI encoding is RFC 2396.
+Basically, the following substitutions do it:
+
+ s/([^\w()'*~!.-])/sprintf '%%%02x', ord $1/eg; # encode
-Encoding is a bit harder, because you can't just blindly change
-all characters that are not letters, digits or underscores (C<\W>)
-into their hex escapes.
-It's important that characters with special meaning like C</> and C<?>
-I<not> be translated. Probably the easiest way to get this right is
-to avoid reinventing the wheel and just use the URI::Escape module,
-available from CPAN.
+ s/%([A-Fa-f\d]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # decode
+
+However, you should only apply them to individual URI components, not
+the entire URI, otherwise you'll lose information and generally mess
+things up. If that didn't explain it, don't worry. Just go read
+section 2 of the RFC, it's probably the best explanation there is.
+
+RFC 2396 also contains a lot of other useful information, including a
+regexp for breaking any arbitrary URI into components (Appendix B).
=head2 How do I redirect to another page?
-According to RFC 2616, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", the
-preferred method is to send a C<Location:> header instead of a
-C<Content-Type:> header:
+Specify the complete URL of the destination (even if it is on the same
+server). This is one of the two different kinds of CGI "Location:"
+responses which are defined in the CGI specification for a Parsed Headers
+script. The other kind (an absolute URLpath) is resolved internally to
+the server without any HTTP redirection. The CGI specifications do not
+allow relative URLs in either case.
- Location: http://www.domain.com/newpage
+Use of CGI.pm is strongly recommended. This example shows redirection
+with a complete URL. This redirection is handled by the web browser.
-Note that relative URLs in these headers can cause strange effects
-because of "optimizations" that servers do.
+ use CGI qw/:standard/;
- $url = "http://www.perl.com/CPAN/";
- print "Location: $url\n\n";
- exit;
+ my $url = 'http://www.cpan.org/';
+ print redirect($url);
-To target a particular frame in a frameset, include the "Window-target:"
-in the header.
- print <<EOF;
- Location: http://www.domain.com/newpage
- Window-target: <FrameName>
+This example shows a redirection with an absolute URLpath. This
+redirection is handled by the local web server.
- EOF
+ my $url = '/CPAN/index.html';
+ print redirect($url);
+
+
+But if coded directly, it could be as follows (the final "\n" is
+shown separately, for clarity), using either a complete URL or
+an absolute URLpath.
+
+ print "Location: $url\n"; # CGI response header
+ print "\n"; # end of headers
-To be correct to the spec, each of those virtual newlines should
-really be physical C<"\015\012"> sequences by the time your message is
-received by the client browser. Except for NPH scripts, though, that
-local newline should get translated by your server into standard form,
-so you shouldn't have a problem here, even if you are stuck on MacOS.
-Everybody else probably won't even notice.
=head2 How do I put a password on my web pages?
-That depends. You'll need to read the documentation for your web
-server, or perhaps check some of the other FAQs referenced above.
+To enable authentication for your web server, you need to configure
+your web server. The configuration is different for different sorts
+of web servers---apache does it differently from iPlanet which does
+it differently from IIS. Check your web server documentation for
+the details for your particular server.
=head2 How do I edit my .htpasswd and .htgroup files with Perl?
The HTTPD::UserAdmin and HTTPD::GroupAdmin modules provide a
consistent OO interface to these files, regardless of how they're
-stored. Databases may be text, dbm, Berkley DB or any database with a
-DBI compatible driver. HTTPD::UserAdmin supports files used by the
-`Basic' and `Digest' authentication schemes. Here's an example:
+stored. Databases may be text, dbm, Berkeley DB or any database with
+a DBI compatible driver. HTTPD::UserAdmin supports files used by the
+"Basic" and "Digest" authentication schemes. Here's an example:
use HTTPD::UserAdmin ();
HTTPD::UserAdmin
=head2 How do I make sure users can't enter values into a form that cause my CGI script to do bad things?
-Read the CGI security FAQ, at
-http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html , and the
-Perl/CGI FAQ at
-http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/perl-cgi-faq.html .
+See the security references listed in the CGI Meta FAQ
-In brief: use tainting (see L<perlsec>), which makes sure that data
-from outside your script (eg, CGI parameters) are never used in
-C<eval> or C<system> calls. In addition to tainting, never use the
-single-argument form of system() or exec(). Instead, supply the
-command and arguments as a list, which prevents shell globbing.
+ http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
=head2 How do I parse a mail header?
=head2 How do I decode a CGI form?
-You use a standard module, probably CGI.pm. Under no circumstances
-should you attempt to do so by hand!
-
-You'll see a lot of CGI programs that blindly read from STDIN the number
-of bytes equal to CONTENT_LENGTH for POSTs, or grab QUERY_STRING for
-decoding GETs. These programs are very poorly written. They only work
-sometimes. They typically forget to check the return value of the read()
-system call, which is a cardinal sin. They don't handle HEAD requests.
-They don't handle multipart forms used for file uploads. They don't deal
-with GET/POST combinations where query fields are in more than one place.
-They don't deal with keywords in the query string.
-
-In short, they're bad hacks. Resist them at all costs. Please do not be
-tempted to reinvent the wheel. Instead, use the CGI.pm or CGI_Lite.pm
-(available from CPAN), or if you're trapped in the module-free land
-of perl1 .. perl4, you might look into cgi-lib.pl (available from
-http://cgi-lib.stanford.edu/cgi-lib/ ).
-
-Make sure you know whether to use a GET or a POST in your form.
-GETs should only be used for something that doesn't update the server.
-Otherwise you can get mangled databases and repeated feedback mail
-messages. The fancy word for this is ``idempotency''. This simply
-means that there should be no difference between making a GET request
-for a particular URL once or multiple times. This is because the
-HTTP protocol definition says that a GET request may be cached by the
-browser, or server, or an intervening proxy. POST requests cannot be
-cached, because each request is independent and matters. Typically,
-POST requests change or depend on state on the server (query or update
-a database, send mail, or purchase a computer).
+(contributed by brian d foy)
+
+Use the CGI.pm module that comes with Perl. It's quick,
+it's easy, and it actually does quite a bit of work to
+ensure things happen correctly. It handles GET, POST, and
+HEAD requests, multipart forms, multivalued fields, query
+string and message body combinations, and many other things
+you probably don't want to think about.
+
+It doesn't get much easier: the CGI module automatically
+parses the input and makes each value available through the
+C<param()> function.
+
+ use CGI qw(:standard);
+
+ my $total = param( 'price' ) + param( 'shipping' );
+
+ my @items = param( 'item' ); # multiple values, same field name
+
+If you want an object-oriented approach, CGI.pm can do that too.
+
+ use CGI;
+
+ my $cgi = CGI->new();
+
+ my $total = $cgi->param( 'price' ) + $cgi->param( 'shipping' );
+
+ my @items = $cgi->param( 'item' );
+
+You might also try CGI::Minimal which is a lightweight version
+of the same thing. Other CGI::* modules on CPAN might work better
+for you, too.
+
+Many people try to write their own decoder (or copy one from
+another program) and then run into one of the many "gotchas"
+of the task. It's much easier and less hassle to use CGI.pm.
=head2 How do I check a valid mail address?
You can't, at least, not in real time. Bummer, eh?
Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a human
-on the other hand to answer you, you cannot determine whether a mail
+on the other end to answer you, you cannot determine whether a mail
address is valid. Even if you apply the mail header standard, you
can have problems, because there are deliverable addresses that aren't
RFC-822 (the mail header standard) compliant, and addresses that aren't
deliverable which are compliant.
+You can use the Email::Valid or RFC::RFC822::Address which check
+the format of the address, although they cannot actually tell you
+if it is a deliverable address (i.e. that mail to the address
+will not bounce). Modules like Mail::CheckUser and Mail::EXPN
+try to interact with the domain name system or particular
+mail servers to learn even more, but their methods do not
+work everywhere---especially for security conscious administrators.
+
Many are tempted to try to eliminate many frequently-invalid
mail addresses with a simple regex, such as
-C</^[\w.-]+\@([\w.-]\.)+\w+$/>. It's a very bad idea. However,
+C</^[\w.-]+\@(?:[\w-]+\.)+\w+$/>. It's a very bad idea. However,
this also throws out many valid ones, and says nothing about
-potential deliverability, so is not suggested. Instead, see
-http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/ckaddr.gz ,
+potential deliverability, so it is not suggested. Instead, see
+http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/ckaddr.gz ,
which actually checks against the full RFC spec (except for nested
comments), looks for addresses you may not wish to accept mail to
(say, Bill Clinton or your postmaster), and then makes sure that the
(personal ID number). Record the address and PIN (best that it be a
random one) for later processing. In the mail you send, ask them to
include the PIN in their reply. But if it bounces, or the message is
-included via a ``vacation'' script, it'll be there anyway. So it's
+included via a "vacation" script, it'll be there anyway. So it's
best to ask them to mail back a slight alteration of the PIN, such as
with the characters reversed, one added or subtracted to each digit, etc.
=head2 How do I decode a MIME/BASE64 string?
-The MIME-tools package (available from CPAN) handles this and a lot
-more. Decoding BASE64 becomes as simple as:
+The MIME-Base64 package (available from CPAN) handles this as well as
+the MIME/QP encoding. Decoding BASE64 becomes as simple as:
- use MIME::base64;
+ use MIME::Base64;
$decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
-A more direct approach is to use the unpack() function's "u"
+The MIME-Tools package (available from CPAN) supports extraction with
+decoding of BASE64 encoded attachments and content directly from email
+messages.
+
+If the string to decode is short (less than 84 bytes long)
+a more direct approach is to use the unpack() function's "u"
format after minor transliterations:
tr#A-Za-z0-9+/##cd; # remove non-base64 chars
The Mail::Internet module uses Net::SMTP which is less Unix-centric than
Mail::Mailer, but less reliable. Avoid raw SMTP commands. There
are many reasons to use a mail transport agent like sendmail. These
-include queueing, MX records, and security.
+include queuing, MX records, and security.
+
+=head2 How do I use MIME to make an attachment to a mail message?
+
+This answer is extracted directly from the MIME::Lite documentation.
+Create a multipart message (i.e., one with attachments).
+
+ use MIME::Lite;
+
+ ### Create a new multipart message:
+ $msg = MIME::Lite->new(
+ From =>'me@myhost.com',
+ To =>'you@yourhost.com',
+ Cc =>'some@other.com, some@more.com',
+ Subject =>'A message with 2 parts...',
+ Type =>'multipart/mixed'
+ );
+
+ ### Add parts (each "attach" has same arguments as "new"):
+ $msg->attach(Type =>'TEXT',
+ Data =>"Here's the GIF file you wanted"
+ );
+ $msg->attach(Type =>'image/gif',
+ Path =>'aaa000123.gif',
+ Filename =>'logo.gif'
+ );
+
+ $text = $msg->as_string;
+
+MIME::Lite also includes a method for sending these things.
+
+ $msg->send;
+
+This defaults to using L<sendmail> but can be customized to use
+SMTP via L<Net::SMTP>.
=head2 How do I read mail?
While you could use the Mail::Folder module from CPAN (part of the
-MailFolder package) or the Mail::Internet module from CPAN (also part
+MailFolder package) or the Mail::Internet module from CPAN (part
of the MailTools package), often a module is overkill. Here's a
mail sorter.
#!/usr/bin/perl
- # bysub1 - simple sort by subject
+
my(@msgs, @sub);
my $msgno = -1;
$/ = ''; # paragraph reads
while (<>) {
- if (/^From/m) {
+ if (/^From /m) {
/^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi;
$sub[++$msgno] = lc($1) || '';
}
=head2 How can I do RPC in Perl?
-A DCE::RPC module is being developed (but is not yet available) and
-will be released as part of the DCE-Perl package (available from
-CPAN). The rpcgen suite, available from CPAN/authors/id/JAKE/, is
-an RPC stub generator and includes an RPC::ONC module.
+(Contributed by brian d foy)
+
+Use one of the RPC modules you can find on CPAN (
+http://search.cpan.org/search?query=RPC&mode=all ).
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
-Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
-All rights reserved.
+Copyright (c) 1997-2005 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
+other authors as noted. All rights reserved.
-When included as part of the Standard Version of Perl, or as part of
-its complete documentation whether printed or otherwise, this work
-may be distributed only under the terms of Perl's Artistic License.
-Any distribution of this file or derivatives thereof I<outside>
-of that package require that special arrangements be made with
-copyright holder.
+This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+under the same terms as Perl itself.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in this file
are hereby placed into the public domain. You are permitted and
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff