HTML and Perl

Fred Claus · Apr 25, 2022

Ok, I'm at a loss, and I could use some help. I am an instructor for some college courses and they threw this course me. It appears the instructions are wrong. For the life of me I can't seem to find the minute issue that is causing it not to work. The student is asked to make a form on a website where the person can sign up for a fan club. Then the html is supposed to pull a perl script to post thank you for contacting us you are not registered (something like that). The code is below based on how the the instructions say to do it. When you press join, it just displays the body of the perl script. What am I missing?

HTML code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Dream Theater Fan Club</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Join with Dream Theater!</h1>
<form method='post' action='signup.pl'>
<fieldset>
<legend>Contact Info</legend>
<label for="name">Name:</label><input type="text" name="name" />
<label for="e-mail">E-mail:</label><input type="text" name="e-mail" />
</fieldset>
<fieldset>
<legend>Comments</legend>
<textarea cols="50" name="comments"></textarea>
</fieldset>
<input type="submit" value="Join" />
<input type="reset" value=" Start over" />
</form>
<a href="index.html">Go home</a>
</body>
</html>

Perl Script:

#/perl/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;

my $cgi=CGI->new();

print
$cgi->header('text/html'),
$cgi->start_html('Fanclub Signup'),
$cgi->h1('You are now signed up.'),
$cgi->p('Thank you for signing up,',
$cgi->strong($cgi->param('name')),'.'),
$cgi->p('The following comment has been submitted:'),
$cgi->blockquote($cgi->param('comments')),
$cgi->end_html;

MichaelBits · Apr 25, 2022

What is this running on?

I'm used to the bash being:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

In a Linux environment.

It points it to the Perl interpreter of the installed OS.

Fred Claus · Apr 25, 2022

Thanks I was so focused on the body of the script I didn't even see that. I fixed it but it's still not working.

MichaelBits · Apr 25, 2022

CGI also has to be enabled and configured on the web server. Seems like it's not actually running it (CGI), which is why just the code shows when clicking it.

NETWizz · Apr 26, 2022

What the other said. What web host are you using because chances are it probably does not support Perl being that is quite an antiquated language this day and age.

You are vastly more likely to support PHP, Python, or ASPX this day and age.

Regardless it should be cake to make that work with a supported language that doesn't break your lesson plan.

print
$cgi->header('text/html'),

Sets the document type to HTML in the header. Most modern languages just do this.

$cgi->start_html('Fanclub Signup'),

Sends this:

<html>
<head>
<title>Fanclub Signup</title>
<head>
<body>

$cgi->h1('You are now signed up.'),
$cgi->p('Thank you for signing up,',
$cgi->strong($cgi->param('name')),'.'),
$cgi->p('The following comment has been submitted:'),
$cgi->blockquote($cgi->param('comments')),

Sends:

<h1>You are now signed up.</h1>
<p>Thank you for signing up,</p>
<strong>name form form</strong>
<p>The following comment has been submitted</p>
<blockquote>comments from form</blockquote>

$cgi->end_html;

Sends:

</body>
</html>

You should probably fix this via adding some CSS and changing the language because nobody really does anything with plain HTML anymore either though the browser will interpret that correctly. If it looks hideous, feel free to add some line breaks with <br /> which is the current proper tag meaning <br></br> in the current HTML specification though the old way still works, too.

****

I am going to suggest a rewrite in PHP because your host is 99% more likely to support it or you can find a free host like InfinitiFree.net

IF you do that, just have students point at the full URL instead of the relative URL, so something like

<form method='post' action='mypage.infiniityfree.net/signup.php'>

Here is your PHP (you probably want to do email, too.):

<?php

$name = $_POST['name'];
$comments = $_POST['comments'];

echo "<html>\n";
echo "<head>n";
echo "<title>Fanclub Signup</title>n";
echo "<head>n";
echo "<body>n";

echo "<h1>You are now signed up.</h1>n";
echo "<p>Thank you for signing up,</p>n";
echo "<strong>$name</strong>n";
echo "<p>The following comment has been submitted</p>n";
echo "<blockquote>$comments</blockquote>n";

echo "<body>\n";
echo "</html>\n";

?>

***

Really, that is all there is too it. I did not test it, but it most certainly should run or complain about about something giving you a line number.

Personally, if it was me, I would probably actually dump the data into a database (See MySQL or MariaDB also supported on InfinitiFree.net). Then perhaps have PHP execute another query and show all or the last hundred postings or something sorted of course such that the new is on top.

I don't know the real intent of the project, but it is obviously to prove that POST data gets sent to a server via a script to be dealt with/executed.

Hope that helps.

mikeroq · Apr 26, 2022

Yea if you want to use Perl, PHP, or any other server side language you need to install it and configure your web server to run it.

I just can't believe they are using Perl.

HTML and Perl

Fred Claus

Well-Known Member

MichaelBits

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Fred Claus

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MichaelBits

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NETWizz

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mikeroq

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