Question

unable to run excel from perl script and from html form

Asked by: lonaj

I am not quite sure whether I have post this thread in the right forum but here is because it is working with perl script so I am posting it here

What is wrong with this I want to run my excel through my perl script but it does not run after while the apache error log is as follow; (the apache version is 2.0.49)
timeout specified has expired: ap_content_length_filter: apr_bucket_read() failed, referer: http://localhost/test.html
Note The perl script runexcel.pl on dos works fine
Also eee.xls is running ok on dos (just type eee.xls and hit return)
Also note I get excel process running but the actual eee.xls it does not kike off.

what is that I am doing wrong ?
 

 

Test.html
<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION=cgi-bin/runprocess.pl>
Select a process To Run:</STRONG>
<SELECT Name="cookie">
<OPTION>run excel
</SELECT>
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" VALUE="Submit the process">
</FORM>
</BODY>

runprocess.pl
#!/perl/bin/perl
 read(STDIN,$buffer,$ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
@pairs=split(/&/,$buffer);
foreach $pair(@pairs){
    ($name,$value)=split(/=/,$pair);  
    $value=~tr/+/ /;                  
    $value=~s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C",hex($1))/eg;
    $FORM{$name}=$value;
}
print"Content-type: text/html\n\n";
if($value eq "Quarterly Employment Verification") {
print "$value Go back to main page\n";
`perl c:\\uu\\runexcel.pl`;
}
exit;

runexcel.pl
#!/perl/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;
#` c:\\security_data\\eee.xls`;
system("c:\\security_data\\eee.xls");

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Asked On
2004-06-11 at 07:03:59ID21022258
Tags

excel

,

perl

,

run

,

script

,

from

Topic

Perl Programming Language

Participating Experts
2
Points
50
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: bebonhamPosted on 2004-06-11 at 07:22:20ID: 11288879

It only works from "dos" because when someone exceutes the script from your webserver, it is trying to open the excel on your machine...and there is probably a permissions issues stoping that.

try putting the excel file in your "htdocs" folder inside apache, and then use print "Location: http://yourserver.com/eee.xls\n\n"; instead of system("c:\\security_data\\eee.xls");

but you will have to present the file to the browser, by sending them to it, or printing it to the browser

feel free to ask for more details if necessary.

bebonham

 

by: kanduraPosted on 2004-06-11 at 07:25:20ID: 11288910

What are you trying to accomplish here? This script starts excel on the webserver, and then? excel will just sit and wait for you to do something with it, but you can't, because the user interface runs on the webserver and is very probably not even visible! The system() call waits for the process to exit, but that never happens; hence the timeout error.

If you want to offer the excel file for download, you would go about it quite differently: you'd print the appropriate 'application/octet-stream' header etc, and then print the file to the browser.

 

by: lonajPosted on 2004-06-11 at 08:40:06ID: 11289697

Ok, The excel script contains macro's open some data file and process's them then send mails and then exit, as I have stated before the excel file is part of the perl scrip, this perl script it does number of other jobs and tasks, but I am having problem with excel.
the html form is act as a menu.
Could you please show me some codes to understand.

 

by: bebonhamPosted on 2004-06-11 at 10:45:11ID: 11290889

okay I don't think you can do that...at least not like this...

see, if your excel is open files on your harddrive....when the person gets this excel over the web, the excel macros will look for these files on the clients hard drive...not yours...so this cannot work like this unless all supporting files are also downloaded to client.

The only way to use the existing excel system would be to download the whole thing, including any other files that it uses, to the clients machine...that has been the case regardless weather you print to the browswer or just put it in htdocs.

I hope that makes this more clear.  If you have to use the excel spreadsheets as they are, then you will have to use an html front end, and use dbd::excel to send the html data to the excell document...even then, I do not know if that will allow you to execute macros, and you may need use win32::Ole stuff

 

by: lonajPosted on 2004-06-20 at 16:26:57ID: 11356048

Thanx for reply and explanation.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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