- The CGI ("Common Gateway Interface") standard was developed
in the early days of httpd, as a way for Web servers to interact with
external programs, passing results to and from a Web client.
- The basic idea is that the user's browser sends a group
of key=value pairs, where the key is the name
of a variable, and the value is that variable's value.
- Two methods are available, but Perl can handle both: the
GET method encodes key/value pairs as part of the URL, and
the POST method uses the http command stream to send
key/value pairs.
- Use an HTML form to define the keys, as well as
setting up types of data for input. Some good pages to get
started are at Webmonkey, or get code at Matt's script archives.
- Examples of input forms (including client-side Javascript
data-checking) are everywhere on the Web. The syntax is simple.
- Recommendation: use carp for CGI processing (see perldoc carp and man CGI::Carp)
. Here's a pretty good
page with tutorial info: http://www.steve.gb.com/perl/lesson19.html
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