Introduction to Web Technologies
UNIT-8
CGI Programming
Unit 9 Using Perl For CGI Programming
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Introduction to Web Technologies
UNIT-8
CGI Programming
The Common Gateway Interface
XHTML is a markup language and does not really allow for interactive
computing (beyond loading additional pages).
Web require computation and database access.
This requires interaction with the server.
Interaction with the server requires a set of protocols to govern it.
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is an example of such a protocol.
CGI, which stands for Common Gateway Interface, is not a
programming language but a protocol.
CGI and LAMP
_LAMP_ is an acronym for a solution stack (short for Linux, Apache,
MySQL and P for Perl, PHP or Python) principal components to build a
viable general purpose web server.
CGI is part of a popular approach to server side computation frequently
called LAMP
There are two other common approaches:
ASP (Active Server Pages), where XHTML is combined with programs or
links to external programs which are compiled into classes.
Java servlets and JSP (Java Server Pages), which are similar to ASP and
somewhat analogous to Java applets.
Running CGI
An HTTP request to run a CGI program is made, identifying a file on the
server as a CGI program. They are so indentified by their addresses or file
name extensions.
Instead of returning the file, it is executed on the server, returning output to
the requesting client.
In most cases, the output is an XHTML document, with the server writing
most of the header.
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CGI Programming
Interaction is commonly through a form.
Running Perl CGI Programs
Running a Perl CGI program requires that perl, the Perl interpreter be
called. For UNIX or Linux, that requires the line
#!/usr/bin/perl
be include at the beginning of the file. (This isnt necessary for
Windows-based servers.)
The program can be called as a hypertext link, or as a side-effect of a
Submit button.
1. Explain how HTML pages are created dynamically using CGI.
Calling a Perl CGI Program
An XHTML document can call a Perl CGI program by including
<a href = "reply.cgi">
Click here to run the CGI program reply.cgi
</a>
A form can invoke a Perl CGI program by giving its address in the
action attribute of the form tag:
<form action = "/cgi-bin/popcorn.cgi
method = "post" >
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reply.html
<!-- to call a simple Perl CGI program -->
<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//w3c//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head> <title> XHTML to call the Perl CGI program, reply.cgi </title>
</h ea d>
<bo dy >
<p> This is our first Perl CGI example
<br /> <br />
<a href = reply.cgi">
Click here to run the CGI program, reply.cgi
</a>
</p>
</b od y>
</html>
reply.cgi
#!/usr/bin/perl
# reply.cgi - This CGI program returns a greeting to the client
print "Content-type: text/html \n\n",
print "<?xml version = '1.0' encoding - 'utf-8'?> \n" ;
print "<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC '-//w3c//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN' \n" ;
print "'http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd'>\n" ;
print " <html xmlns = 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'> \n" ;
print "<h
head><title> reply.cgi example </title></h
head>\n" ;
print "<b
body>\n" ;
print "<h1>Greetings from your Web server! </h1>\n" ;
print "</b
body></html>";
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UNIT-8
What is query string? Explain how query string is transmitted to
the server with get and post method.
--8
What is CGI? How parsing of data is done for GET and POST
methods. --10
CGI Definition:
CGI is a Common Gateway Interface for communication between
the web server and CGI scripts that can be run on the server.
CGI programs (or scripts) are commonly written in
PERL Script, Shell Script, C or C++ program
Query Strings
A string query is a string containing data associated with a
request to the Web server.
The request is typically made using GET and POST methods.
query strings can be handwritten and used directly with GET and
POST
Mainly form data and are constructed by the browser when
the Submit button is clicked.
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Query Strings Format
For every element (widget) with a value, the name and value is
coded as a character string in the format of name = value and
included in the query string:
payment = discover
If there is more than one widget, they are separated by ampersands (&)
Caramel=7&payment=discover
Special characters can be coded using a percent sign and their ASCII
value ( %20 for space and %21 for !)
Payment=visa & saying=Eat %20your %20fruit % 21
get Method
The action of a form is always get or post, with get being the default.
When get is used, the browser attaches the query string to the URL
of the CGI program, so the form data is transmitted to the server
with the URL.
The server removes the query string from URL and places it in the
environmental variable QUERY_STRING, where program can access it.
get also be used to pass parameters to server when there is no form.
Disadvantage- some servers limit the length of URL and will
truncate.
post Method
The post method passes the query string through standard input to
the CGI program so the CGI programs just reads it as STDIN.
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There is no length limitation for the query string with the post
methods, so its a better choice if there are several widgets.
Example: Placing Data in The Query String
$request_method = $ENV{REQUEST_METHOD};
if ( $request_method eq GET )
{
$query_string = $ENV{QUERY_STRING};
}
elsif ( $request_method eq POST )
{
read( STDIN, $query_string,
$ENV{CONTENT_LENGTH} );
}
else
{
print Error = the request method is illegal \n;
exit(1);
}
What is the perpose of the shortcuts in CGI.PM?
--06
Purpose:
With the Perl CGI.pm module, you can create dynamic Web
pages quickly and easily from within the powerful Perl
programming language.
CGI.pm contain functions to perform common tasks like
writing commonly used HTML tags and for creating form
elements such as buttons and lists.
Following declaration gives access to a particular module of
CGI.pm
use CGI ":standard";
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Common CGI.pm Functions
br
returns a break tag <br />
print br;
#places a break in the XHTML document.
h1
places the string in a largest size header
Example
print h1("This is the real stuff");
-creates the XHTML code:
<h1> This is the real stuff </h1>
textarea
places a textarea in the HXTML with the attributes passed as a hash literal
Example:
print textarea( -name => "Description",
- rows => "2",
-cols => "35" );
produces:
<textarea name = "Description" rows = "2" cols = "35" >
</textarea>
a
creates a hypertext link or another anchor
print ( a { -href => "fruit.html" },
"Press here for fruit descriptions" );
produces
<a href = "fruit.html" >
Press here for fruit descriptions
</a>
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ol and li
ol creates an ordered list:
print ol ( li ( {-type =>"square"}, ["milk", "bread", "cheese"] ) );
produces
<ol>
<li type="square"> milk </li>
<li type="square"> bread </li>
<li type="square"> cheese </li>
</ol>
radio_group
sets up an entire radio group
print radio_group ( -name=>"colors",
-value => ['blue', 'green", 'yellow', 'red'],
-default => 'blue');
produces
<input
<input
<input
<input
type="radio" name = "colors" value="blue" checked /> blue
type="radio" name = "colors" value="green" /> green
type="radio" name = "colors" value="yellow" /> yellow
type="radio" name = "colors" value="red" /> red
----------------------------------start_html
produces the boilerplate for the opening HTML;
print start_html("Paul's Gardening Supplies");
produces
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional //EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US">
<head><title> Paul's Gardening Supplies </title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body>
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header
produces boilerplate for the beginning of an XHTML document
print header
produces
Content-type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
blank line
param
allows the program separate name/value pairs that appear in a query
string.
If the query string is
name=Bob%20Brumbel&payment=discover
The statement
my $myName = param("name")
assigns the variable $myName the value "Bob Brumbel"
The statement
my ($myName, $salary) = ( param("name"),
param("payment") );
would assign "Bob Brumbel" to $myName and "discover" to
$salary
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end_html
produces closing tags for an XHTML document
print end_html;
Produces :
</body> </html>
What is Cookie? Where is it stored? Explain how to create and delete
a cookie. 10
What is Cookie? Where is it stored? What is form of the value of a
cookie? --06
What is Cookie? Explain creating, reading and deleting cookie.
--10
Why need Cookies
A session is the time span during which a browser interacts with a
specific server.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) stores no information from a
session that the next session can use, despite the fact that this
information may be useful.
Cookies are a useful of saving information about a session.
The server is given this information when the browser makes
subsequent requests of the same server.
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What Is A Cookie?
Definition:
A cookie is a small object of information used to maintain
state information between the web server and the client browser. .
Cookies can be passed from browser to server or from server to
browser in an HTTP message header.
Cookies are assigned a lifetime; when it reaches the end of that
lifetime, it is deleted from the client machine.
Every browser includes all the cookies that the host machine has
stored that are associated with the server.
Cookies are stored as text and can be deleted by the host machine.
Creating Cookies
CGI.pm supports cookies through the cookie function.
The cookie function can create cookies:
cookie( -name => aCookieName,
-value => aValue
-expires => aLifeTimeValue );
Calling cookie without parameters will return a hash with all
the cookies in the HTTP header of the current request.
Returning Specific Cookies
To retrieve a specific cookie, the name of that cookie is given as a
parameter:
$age = cookie('age');
To display all the cookies (both names and values), we could write:
print "Cookie Name \t Cookie Value <br />;
foreach $name( keys cookie() )
{
print "$name \t cookie($name) <br />";
}
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Write perl program which uses built-in function to get current system time
and date and formats that information and print on screen. --10
Getting the Time
If we wanted the date and time, we could use time to provide the
seconds since January 1, 1970.
The function localtime calls time and returns 9 values:
($sec, $min, $hour, $mday, $mon, $year, $wday,
$yday, $iddat) = localtime;
mday is the day of the month
mon is the month (0 to 11)
year is the year since 1900
wday is the day of the week (0 to 6)
yday is the day of the year
isdst is a Boolean telling whether this is Daylight Saving Time
time_date.pl
# Input: None
# Output: The nine values return by localtime
($sec, $min, $hour, $mday, $mon, $year, $wday,
$yday, $iddat) = localtime;
print "seconds = $sec\n";
print "minutes = $min\n";
print "hour = $hours\n";
print "day_of_the_month = $mday\n";
print "month = $mon\n";
print "year = $year\n";
print "day_of_week = $wday\n";
print "day_of_year = $yday\n";
print "daylight_Saving = $isdst\n";
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Getting the Day of the Week
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$day_of_week =
( qw( Sunday Monday
Tuesday Wednesay Thursday
Friday Saturday ) ) [ (localtime)[6] ];
Creating A Greeting For Visitors
1. Get the cookie named last_time
2. Get the current day of the week, month, day of the month and put them in
a cookie called last_time
3. Put the cookie in the header of the return document
4. If there is no existing cookie, produce a welcome message for the firsttime visitor
5. If there was a cookie, produce a welcome message that includes the
previous visit's day of the week, month and day of the month
day_cookie.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl w
# A CGI-Perl program to use a cookie to remember the day
# of the last login from a user and display it when run
use CGI ":standard";
@last_day = cookie('last_time');
#>>> Get the existing day cookie, if there was one
$weekDay = ( qw ( Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday Friday Saturday)) [ (localtime) [6] ] ;
#>>> Get the day of a week
$month= ( qw (January February March April May June July August
September October November December)) [ (localtime) [4] ];
#>>> Get the month
$day_of_month = (localtime)[3];
#>>> Get the day of a month
@day_stuff = ($day_of_week, $day_of_month, $month);
#>>> make the new cookie
$day_cookie = cookie(
-name => 'last_time',
-value => \@day_stuff,
-expires => '+5d'
);
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#>>> start Producing the return document, First, put the cookie in the new header
print header (-cookie => $day_cookie);
print start_html('This is day_cookie.pl');
#>>> If there was no day cookie, this is the first visit
if (scalar(@last_day) == 0)
{
print "Welcome to you on your first visit to our
site <br />";
} # Otherwise, welcome the uyser back and give the date of the last visit
else
{
($day_of_week, $day_of_month, $month) = @last_day;
print "Welcome back! <br />"
print "Your last visit was on "
print "$day_of_week, $month $day_of_month<br />";
}
print end_html;
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