Question

New to CGI

Asked by: running32

I am new to CGI but I was really impressed by a site https://www.marketrends.net/click1003/ssl/clickframe2.pl.  Does anyone know how they got the application to print out so cleanly once you input your email address and click submit.

Thanks

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Asked On
2003-08-27 at 06:49:32ID20721495
Topics

CGI Scripting

,

Server Side Includes (SSI)

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: dutchfoxerPosted on 2003-08-27 at 16:59:41ID: 9236620

The page looks like a paper form, looks professional indeed.

But actually the appearance of that page is not the credit of the usage of CGI (.pl) but good use of HTML, because it is HTML and images that make the page look that way.

I cannot be sure, but I guess they work with the CGI as follows:
1> first the cgi program creates a form you can fill in
2> it processes the contents of the form once it is submitted
3> it shows the final form with the values in the correct places

Step 1> open in CGI an HTML file with the form in it and show on the browser

Step 2> process the form (see html of form, it has this line in it
<form method="POST" .......[cut].... action="https://www.marketrends.net/click1003/ssl/stringform.pl" onSubmit="return Validator(smartform);"> )

Step 3> with the values from the form (and possibly some calculations) display a pre-created HTML page and replace special tags with values. Example HTML with tags:

<table><tr><td>Name</td><td>%%name%%</td></tr>
<tr><td>City</td><td>%%city%%</td></tr></table>

Now the cgi can replace the %%name%% with for example $name.


The above is an example of how it can be done.

There are some form generators/processors that can do it for you. You can take a look at the following URL where you can download free form processors:
http://www.cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Form_Processing/

 

by: zero303Posted on 2003-08-28 at 07:09:52ID: 9240534

I agree with dutchfoxer - could have said it better myself...

In more detail...

store the html template of the form in a text file (or as a html file if you prefer), this file will contain %%variables%% as described above in place of the actual content...
read the file and assign it to a scalar (eg $pageData)
then do the following ...

$_ = $pageData;
$pageData =~ s/%%name%%/$name/;

repeat for every entry in the form...

I used this same technique on the news page of www.noradskatepark.co.uk where i replaced #headline1#, #article1# etc with the actual news story....


hope that helps...

Gar...

 

by: running32Posted on 2003-08-28 at 07:38:23ID: 9240822

Thank you both for your help.  It pointed me in the right direction I was really lost.

 

by: zero303Posted on 2003-08-29 at 00:47:36ID: 9246125

didt fancy sharing points then ;)


Good Luck

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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