Question

CGI writing to file

Asked by: perlperl

I have a CGI script running on my desktop with APACHE as web server.
In my CGI/Perl script, I am doing

   open(TP, "> $file") or die "Cannot open the file";
      print TP "TESTTTTTTTTTTTTT \n";      
   close TP;

$file is the path not on my desktop (C:) but on a network share....

After executing the script....It does not create the file...also it does not throw any error message saying that it cannot open file or so...

I can manually create the file on network share from command prompt but not through teh CGI script

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Asked On
2007-12-07 at 06:05:01ID23008561
Tags

file

,

write

,

cgi

,

perl

Topic

CGI Scripting

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
18

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Answers

 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 06:06:30ID: 20427400

I also tried to open the file in read mode and display the contents of file...The CGI script didn't fail saying it cannot open the file...but at the same time it did not display the output of file contents...which means it didn't open the file...

 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 06:08:46ID: 20427415

I tried the following...

   open(TP, "$file") or print "Cannot open the file ";


It printed the the value on the browser "Cannot open the file "
so now its confirmed....it cannot open the file thru browser....


 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 06:12:15ID: 20427440

I tried to

print `dir S:`;

It didn't print anything which means CGI script does not have access to network drive S: which i smapped to something

 

by: PeeweePosted on 2007-12-07 at 07:40:29ID: 20428163

perlperl,
your code is fine.. there is no problem with that..
you should print out what $file though it may not be what you expect...

i.e.
my $file = '\\\dfs.ml.com\amrs\groups\institutionalloans\text.txt';
will result in
\\dfs.ml.com\amrs\groups\institutionalloans\text.txt

its strange that you are not getting any error message fom perl... try running just the open and file write in a script and run it via the command line if you can..

 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 07:47:58ID: 20428238

well, i found online some document which says due to security purpose CGI cannot have access to network drive...but i didn't find any solution how to overcome it....

 

by: PeeweePosted on 2007-12-07 at 08:10:30ID: 20428430

what are you trying to do?

can you not create the file locally and then ftp to its final destination? would that be an option?

 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 08:15:26ID: 20428483

my cgi script are on C: on my desktop...where the apache server is running...I want to create a file on network drive S:
i don't have the acces thru CGI to S:

how can i create file on network drive using CGI

 

by: PeeweePosted on 2007-12-07 at 08:24:00ID: 20428577

create your file in a directory where you have permission to i.e. where your cgi script is running from or somewhere else on your c drive. Once the file is complete you can ftp this file to the network location of the s drive.

if my s drive is connected to \\dfs.ml.com\amrs\groups\institutionalloans.
whats stopping you from ftping the completed file to the location \dfs.ml.com\amrs\groups\institutionalloans using something like Net::FTP?

what do you think?

 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 08:25:21ID: 20428592

I am just wondering, since i can't simple open on the file on S:,  wil Net::FTP have the access to do it...

 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 08:34:27ID: 20428678

also i don't want to specify user/password in cgi sccirpt

 

by: PeeweePosted on 2007-12-07 at 08:54:06ID: 20428870

out of interest where is the online document that you found on the web which highlights that  CGI cannot have access to network drive?

 

by: PeeweePosted on 2007-12-07 at 09:08:38ID: 20429014

http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread405787.html
this article may help you out...  

 

by: FishMongerPosted on 2007-12-07 at 10:45:21ID: 20429742

Perl cgi scripts can read/write to mapped network shares, provided the file permissions are set correctly.

Your script didn't give you any error message in the browser about not being able to open the file because you didn't tell perl to do so.

Here's a working test script.

#!/usr/bin/perl
 
use warnings;
use strict;
use CGI;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser warningsToBrowser);
 
my $cgi = CGI->new;
 
print $cgi->header, $cgi->start_html;
warningsToBrowser(1);
 
my $file = 'e:/file.txt';  # change this to meet your requirements.
 
# first, lets open it for writing and write to it.
open(my $out, '>', $file) or die "can't open $file $!";
print $out "some text\n";
print $out "another line of text\n";
close $out;
 
# now, lets open it for reading and output its contents.
open(my $in, '<', $file) or die "can't open $file $!";
my $content = join '', <$in>;
close $in;
 
print $cgi->pre($content);
print $cgi->end_html;

                                              
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by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 10:58:24ID: 20429844

Yeah i tried that

I get

Cannot open the file for write Invalid argument  at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/test.cgi line 96


and line 96 contains

open(FILE, "> $file") or die "Cannot open the file for write  $! ";

and $file = "S:\\temp\file.txt"    ## its the file on network....

why can't i open this file...what permissions do i need to set....

 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 11:03:54ID: 20429897

I also checked   S:/temp has  777 permission

 

by: FishMongerPosted on 2007-12-07 at 11:18:16ID: 20430004

>> Cannot open the file for write Invalid argument

That's because you're using a single backslash in the path and \f means formfeed

$file = "S:\\temp\\file.txt"

or better yet
$file = "S:/temp/file.txt"

Also, use the 3 arg form of open as I showed in my first post.

 

by: perlperlPosted on 2007-12-07 at 11:19:39ID: 31413402

Well, I found the solution...It does not recognize the letter S: directly
I have to give the complete path...


Thnaks!!

 

by: FishMongerPosted on 2007-12-07 at 11:23:31ID: 20430056

Another thing to notice and be aware of is that you're using double quotes in the assignment, which tells Perl to do variable interpolation.  Since you don't need the interpolation in that assignment, you could/should use single quotes.  In which case, either the forward slash or a single backslash would work as the path separator.

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