X-Git-Url: http://git.shadowcat.co.uk/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?a=blobdiff_plain;f=pod%2Fperlfaq9.pod;h=cdc00d6755319545fb7081bb62ca47d8107c467e;hb=8b4ac5a423952fb163d48c435ab6e00458e66f1f;hp=65360643609528cc42b50e6828a7538c44eabeb1;hpb=be94a90153eca0a67ea73e2ec074645fb9e0b70d;p=p5sagit%2Fp5-mst-13.2.git

diff --git a/pod/perlfaq9.pod b/pod/perlfaq9.pod
index 6536064..cdc00d6 100644
--- a/pod/perlfaq9.pod
+++ b/pod/perlfaq9.pod
@@ -1,45 +1,66 @@
 =head1 NAME
 
-perlfaq9 - Networking ($Revision: 1.24 $, $Date: 1999/01/08 05:39:48 $)
+perlfaq9 - Networking ($Revision: 1.5 $, $Date: 2001/11/09 08:06:04 $)
 
 =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 useful FAQs and related documents are:
+The original CGI specification is at: http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/ 
 
-    CGI FAQ
-        http://www.webthing.com/tutorials/cgifaq.html
+Current best-practice RFC draft at: http://CGI-Spec.Golux.Com/ 
 
-    Web FAQ
-        http://www.boutell.com/faq/
+Other relevant documentation listed in: http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
 
-    WWW Security FAQ
-        http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
+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. 
 
-    HTTP Spec
-        http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Protocols/HTTP/
+The similarity between CGI response headers (defined in the CGI
+specification) and HTTP response headers (defined in the HTTP
+specification, RFC2616) is intentional, but can sometimes be confusing.
+
+The CGI specification defines two kinds of script: the "Parsed Header"
+script, and the "Non Parsed Header" (NPH) script. Check your server
+documentation to see what it supports. "Parsed Header" scripts are
+simpler in various respects. The CGI specification allows any of the
+usual newline representations in the CGI response (it's the server's
+job to create an accurate HTTP response based on it). So "\n" written in
+text mode is technically correct, and recommended. NPH scripts are more
+tricky: they must put out a complete and accurate set of HTTP
+transaction response headers; the HTTP specification calls for records
+to be terminated with carriage-return and line-feed, i.e ASCII \015\012
+written in binary mode.
+
+Using CGI.pm gives excellent platform independence, including EBCDIC
+systems. CGI.pm selects an appropriate newline representation
+($CGI::CRLF) and sets binmode as appropriate.
+
+=head2 My CGI script runs from the command line but not the browser.  (500 Server Error)
+
+If 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?
 
@@ -76,14 +97,16 @@ stamp prepended.
 
 =head2 How do I remove HTML from a string?
 
-The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is to use HTML::Parse
-from CPAN (part of the HTML-Tree package on CPAN).
+The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is to use HTML::Parser
+from CPAN.  Another mostly correct
+way is to use HTML::FormatText which not only removes HTML but also
+attempts to do a little simple formatting of the resulting plain text.
 
 Many folks attempt a simple-minded regular expression approach, like
-C<s/E<lt>.*?E<gt>//g>, but that fails in many cases because the tags
+C<< s/<.*?>//g >>, but that fails in many cases because the tags
 may continue over line breaks, they may contain quoted angle-brackets,
-or HTML comment may be present.  Plus folks forget to convert
-entities, like C<&lt;> for example.
+or HTML comment may be present.  Plus, folks forget to convert
+entities--like C<&lt;> for example.
 
 Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works for most files:
 
@@ -92,7 +115,7 @@ Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works for most files:
 
 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
@@ -100,7 +123,7 @@ a solution:
 
     <IMG SRC = "foo.gif" ALT = "A > B">
 
-    <IMG SRC = "foo.gif" 
+    <IMG SRC = "foo.gif"
 	 ALT = "A > B">
 
     <!-- <A comment> -->
@@ -120,23 +143,28 @@ on text like this:
 
 =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.
+
+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, 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?
 
@@ -147,7 +175,7 @@ the same as the startform() method.
 
 =head2 How do I make a pop-up menu in HTML?
 
-Use the B<E<lt>SELECTE<gt>> and B<E<lt>OPTIONE<gt>> tags.  The CGI.pm
+Use the B<< <SELECT> >> and B<< <OPTION> >> tags.  The CGI.pm
 module (available from CPAN) supports this widget, as well as many
 others, including some that it cleverly synthesizes on its own.
 
@@ -159,8 +187,9 @@ on your system, is this:
     $html_code = `lynx -source $url`;
     $text_data = `lynx -dump $url`;
 
-The libwww-perl (LWP) modules from CPAN provide a more powerful way to
-do this.  They work through proxies, and don't require lynx:
+The libwww-perl (LWP) modules from CPAN provide a more powerful way
+to do this.  They don't require lynx, but like lynx, can still work
+through proxies:
 
     # simplest version
     use LWP::Simple;
@@ -168,12 +197,12 @@ do this.  They work through proxies, and don't require lynx:
 
     # or print HTML from a URL
     use LWP::Simple;
-    getprint "http://www.sn.no/libwww-perl/";
+    getprint "http://www.linpro.no/lwp/";
 
     # or print ASCII from HTML from a URL
     # also need HTML-Tree package from CPAN
     use LWP::Simple;
-    use HTML::Parse;
+    use HTML::Parser;
     use HTML::FormatText;
     my ($html, $ascii);
     $html = get("http://www.perl.com/");
@@ -207,38 +236,60 @@ the content appropriately.
 
 =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.
+
 
-Encoding is a bit harder, because you can't just blindly change
-all the non-alphanumeric characters (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,
-which is part of the libwww-perl package (LWP) available from CPAN.
+The best source of detailed information on URI encoding is RFC 2396.
+Basically, the following substitutions do it:
+
+    s/([^\w()'*~!.-])/sprintf '%%%02x', $1/eg;   # encode
+
+    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?
 
-Instead of sending back a C<Content-Type> as the headers of your
-reply, send back a C<Location:> header.  Officially this should be a
-C<URI:> header, so the CGI.pm module (available from CPAN) sends back
-both:
+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.
+
+Use of CGI.pm is strongly recommended.  This example shows redirection
+with a complete URL. This redirection is handled by the web browser.
 
-    Location: http://www.domain.com/newpage
-    URI: http://www.domain.com/newpage
+      use CGI qw/:standard/;
 
-Note that relative URLs in these headers can cause strange effects
-because of "optimizations" that servers do.
+      my $url = 'http://www.cpan.org/';
+      print redirect($url);
 
-    $url = "http://www.perl.com/CPAN/";
-    print "Location: $url\n\n";
-    exit;
 
-To be correct to the spec, each of those C<"\n">
-should really each be C<"\015\012">, but unless you're
-stuck on MacOS, you probably won't notice.
+This example shows a redirection with an absolute URLpath.  This
+redirection is handled by the local web server.
+
+      my $url = '/CPAN/index.html';
+      print redirect($url);
+
+
+But if coded directly, it could be as follows (the final "\n" is 
+shown separately, for clarity), using either a complete URL or
+an absolute URLpath. 
+
+      print "Location: $url\n";   # CGI response header
+      print "\n";                 # end of headers
+
 
 =head2 How do I put a password on my web pages?
 
@@ -249,8 +300,8 @@ server, or perhaps check some of the other FAQs referenced above.
 
 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
+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 ();
@@ -260,21 +311,14 @@ DBI compatible driver.  HTTPD::UserAdmin supports files used by the
 
 =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?
 
 For a quick-and-dirty solution, try this solution derived
-from page 222 of the 2nd edition of "Programming Perl":
+from L<perlfunc/split>:
 
     $/ = '';
     $header = <MSG>;
@@ -329,11 +373,11 @@ RFC-822 (the mail header standard) compliant, and addresses that aren't
 deliverable which are compliant.
 
 Many are tempted to try to eliminate many frequently-invalid
-mail addresses with a simple regexp, such as
-C</^[\w.-]+\@([\w.-]\.)+\w+$/>.  It's a very bad idea.  However,
+mail addresses with a simple regex, such as
+C</^[\w.-]+\@(?:[\w-]+\.)+\w+$/>.  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
@@ -366,13 +410,18 @@ 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
@@ -382,12 +431,12 @@ format after minor transliterations:
 
 =head2 How do I return the user's mail address?
 
-On systems that support getpwuid, the $E<lt> variable and the
+On systems that support getpwuid, the $< variable, and the
 Sys::Hostname module (which is part of the standard perl distribution),
 you can probably try using something like this:
 
     use Sys::Hostname;
-    $address = sprintf('%s@%s', getpwuid($<), hostname);
+    $address = sprintf('%s@%s', scalar getpwuid($<), hostname);
 
 Company policies on mail address can mean that this generates addresses
 that the company's mail system will not accept, so you should ask for
@@ -423,7 +472,12 @@ the message into the queue.  This last option means your message won't
 be immediately delivered, so leave it out if you want immediate
 delivery.
 
-Or use the CPAN module Mail::Mailer:
+Alternate, less convenient approaches include calling mail (sometimes
+called mailx) directly or simply opening up port 25 have having an
+intimate conversation between just you and the remote SMTP daemon,
+probably sendmail.
+
+Or you might be able use the CPAN module Mail::Mailer:
 
     use Mail::Mailer;
 
@@ -438,34 +492,51 @@ Or use the CPAN module Mail::Mailer:
 
 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.
+are many reasons to use a mail transport agent like sendmail.  These
+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(1)> but can be customized to use
+SMTP via L<Net::SMTP>.
 
 =head2 How do I read mail?
 
-Use the Mail::Folder module from CPAN (part of the MailFolder package) or
-the Mail::Internet module from CPAN (also part of the MailTools package).
-
-   # sending mail
-    use Mail::Internet;
-    use Mail::Header;
-    # say which mail host to use
-    $ENV{SMTPHOSTS} = 'mail.frii.com';
-    # create headers
-    $header = new Mail::Header;
-    $header->add('From', 'gnat@frii.com');
-    $header->add('Subject', 'Testing');
-    $header->add('To', 'gnat@frii.com');
-    # create body
-    $body = 'This is a test, ignore';
-    # create mail object
-    $mail = new Mail::Internet(undef, Header => $header, Body => \[$body]);
-    # send it
-    $mail->smtpsend or die;
-
-Often a module is overkill, though.  Here's a mail sorter.
-
-    #!/usr/bin/perl 
+While you could use the Mail::Folder module from CPAN (part of the
+MailFolder package) or the Mail::Internet module from CPAN (also 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;
@@ -476,12 +547,12 @@ Often a module is overkill, though.  Here's a mail sorter.
             $sub[++$msgno] = lc($1) || '';
         }
         $msgs[$msgno] .= $_;
-    } 
+    }
     for my $i (sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msgs)) {
         print $msgs[$i];
     }
 
-Or more succinctly, 
+Or more succinctly,
 
     #!/usr/bin/perl -n00
     # bysub2 - awkish sort-by-subject
@@ -517,7 +588,7 @@ systems.)
 =head2 How do I fetch a news article or the active newsgroups?
 
 Use the Net::NNTP or News::NNTPClient modules, both available from CPAN.
-This can make tasks like fetching the newsgroup list as simple as:
+This can make tasks like fetching the newsgroup list as simple as
 
     perl -MNews::NNTPClient
       -e 'print News::NNTPClient->new->list("newsgroups")'
@@ -529,7 +600,7 @@ available from CPAN) is more complex but can put as well as fetch.
 
 =head2 How can I do RPC in Perl?
 
-A DCE::RPC module is being developed (but is not yet available), and
+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.
@@ -539,16 +610,11 @@ an RPC stub generator and includes an RPC::ONC module.
 Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
 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 Licence.
-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
 encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun
 or for profit as you see fit.  A simple comment in the code giving
 credit would be courteous but is not required.
-