=head1 NAME
-perlfaq9 - Networking ($Revision: 3606 $)
+perlfaq9 - Networking
=head1 DESCRIPTION
http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
-
=head2 How can I get better error messages from a CGI program?
Use the CGI::Carp module. It replaces C<warn> and C<die>, plus the
more verbose and safer versions. It still sends them to the normal
server error log.
- use CGI::Carp;
- warn "This is a complaint";
- die "But this one is serious";
+ use CGI::Carp;
+ warn "This is a complaint";
+ die "But this one is serious";
The following use of CGI::Carp also redirects errors to a file of your choice,
placed in a BEGIN block to catch compile-time warnings as well:
- BEGIN {
- use CGI::Carp qw(carpout);
- open(LOG, ">>/var/local/cgi-logs/mycgi-log")
- or die "Unable to append to mycgi-log: $!\n";
- carpout(*LOG);
- }
+ BEGIN {
+ use CGI::Carp qw(carpout);
+ open(LOG, ">>/var/local/cgi-logs/mycgi-log")
+ or die "Unable to append to mycgi-log: $!\n";
+ carpout(*LOG);
+ }
You can even arrange for fatal errors to go back to the client browser,
which is nice for your own debugging, but might confuse the end user.
- use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
- die "Bad error here";
+ use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
+ die "Bad error here";
Even if the error happens before you get the HTTP header out, the module
will try to take care of this to avoid the dreaded server 500 errors.
Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works for most files:
- #!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
- s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\1)*>//gs
+ #!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
+ s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\1)*>//gs
If you want a more complete solution, see the 3-stage striphtml
program in
Here are some tricky cases that you should think about when picking
a solution:
- <IMG SRC = "foo.gif" ALT = "A > B">
+
<IMG SRC = "foo.gif" ALT = "A > B">
- <IMG SRC = "foo.gif"
ALT = "A > B">
- <!-- <A comment> -->
- <script>if (a<b && a>c)</script>
+ <script>if (a<b && a>c)</script>
- <# Just data #>
+ <# Just data #>
- <![INCLUDE CDATA [ >>>>>>>>>>>> ]]>
+ <![INCLUDE CDATA [ >>>>>>>>>>>> ]]>
If HTML comments include other tags, those solutions would also break
on text like this:
- <!-- This section commented out.
- <B>You can't see me!</B>
- -->
+ <!-- This section commented out.
+ <B>You can't see me!</B>
+ -->
=head2 How do I extract URLs?
module based approaches but only extracts URLs from anchors where the first
attribute is HREF and there are no other attributes.
- #!/usr/bin/perl -n00
- # qxurl - tchrist@perl.com
- print "$2\n" while m{
- < \s*
- A \s+ HREF \s* = \s* (["']) (.*?) \1
- \s* >
- }gsix;
-
+ #!/usr/bin/perl -n00
+ # qxurl - tchrist@perl.com
+ print "$2\n" while m{
+ < \s*
+ A \s+ HREF \s* = \s* (["']) (.*?) \1
+ \s* >
+ }gsix;
=head2 How do I download a file from the user's machine? How do I open a file on another machine?
See the section in the CGI.pm documentation on file uploads for code
examples and details.
-=head2 How do I make a pop-up menu in HTML?
+=head2 How do I make an HTML pop-up menu with Perl?
+
+(contributed by brian d foy)
+
+The CGI.pm module (which comes with Perl) has functions to create
+the HTML form widgets. See the CGI.pm documentation for more
+examples.
+
+ use CGI qw/:standard/;
+ print header,
+ start_html('Favorite Animals'),
+
+ start_form,
+ "What's your favorite animal? ",
+ popup_menu(
+ -name => 'animal',
+ -values => [ qw( Llama Alpaca Camel Ram ) ]
+ ),
+ submit,
-Use the B<< <SELECT> >> and B<< <OPTION> >> tags. The CGI.pm
-module (available from CPAN) supports this widget, as well as many
-others, including some that it cleverly synthesizes on its own.
+ end_form,
+ end_html;
=head2 How do I fetch an HTML file?
-One approach, if you have the lynx text-based HTML browser installed
-on your system, is this:
+(contributed by brian d foy)
+
+Use the libwww-perl distribution. The C<LWP::Simple> module can fetch web
+resources and give their content back to you as a string:
+
+ use LWP::Simple qw(get);
- $html_code = `lynx -source $url`;
- $text_data = `lynx -dump $url`;
+ my $html = get( "http://www.example.com/index.html" );
-The libwww-perl (LWP) modules from CPAN provide a more powerful way
-to do this. They don't require lynx, but like lynx, can still work
-through proxies:
+It can also store the resource directly in a file:
- # simplest version
- use LWP::Simple;
- $content = get($URL);
+ use LWP::Simple qw(getstore);
- # or print HTML from a URL
- use LWP::Simple;
- getprint "http://www.linpro.no/lwp/";
+ getstore( "http://www.example.com/index.html", "foo.html" );
- # or print ASCII from HTML from a URL
- # also need HTML-Tree package from CPAN
- use LWP::Simple;
- use HTML::Parser;
- use HTML::FormatText;
- my ($html, $ascii);
- $html = get("http://www.perl.com/");
- defined $html
- or die "Can't fetch HTML from http://www.perl.com/";
- $ascii = HTML::FormatText->new->format(parse_html($html));
- print $ascii;
+If you need to do something more complicated, you can use
+C<LWP::UserAgent> module to create your own user-agent (e.g. browser)
+to get the job done. If you want to simulate an interactive web
+browser, you can use the C<WWW::Mechanize> module.
=head2 How do I automate an HTML form submission?
If you're submitting values using the GET method, create a URL and encode
the form using the C<query_form> method:
- use LWP::Simple;
- use URI::URL;
+ use LWP::Simple;
+ use URI::URL;
- my $url = url('http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod');
- $url->query_form(module => 'DB_File', readme => 1);
- $content = get($url);
+ my $url = url('http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod');
+ $url->query_form(module => 'DB_File', readme => 1);
+ $content = get($url);
If you're using the POST method, create your own user agent and encode
the content appropriately.
- use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
- use LWP::UserAgent;
+ use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
+ use LWP::UserAgent;
- $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
- my $req = POST 'http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod',
- [ module => 'DB_File', readme => 1 ];
- $content = $ua->request($req)->as_string;
+ $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
+ my $req = POST 'http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod',
+ [ module => 'DB_File', readme => 1 ];
+ $content = $ua->request($req)->as_string;
=head2 How do I decode or create those %-encodings on the web?
+X<URI> X<CGI.pm> X<CGI> X<URI::Escape> X<RFC 2396>
+
+(contributed by brian d foy)
+
+Those C<%> encodings handle reserved characters in URIs, as described
+in RFC 2396, Section 2. This encoding replaces the reserved character
+with the hexadecimal representation of the character's number from
+the US-ASCII table. For instance, a colon, C<:>, becomes C<%3A>.
-If you are writing a CGI script, you should be using the CGI.pm module
-that comes with perl, or some other equivalent module. The CGI module
-automatically decodes queries for you, and provides an escape()
-function to handle encoding.
+In CGI scripts, you don't have to worry about decoding URIs if you are
+using C<CGI.pm>. You shouldn't have to process the URI yourself,
+either on the way in or the way out.
-The best source of detailed information on URI encoding is RFC 2396.
-Basically, the following substitutions do it:
+If you have to encode a string yourself, remember that you should
+never try to encode an already-composed URI. You need to escape the
+components separately then put them together. To encode a string, you
+can use the the C<URI::Escape> module. The C<uri_escape> function
+returns the escaped string:
- s/([^\w()'*~!.-])/sprintf '%%%02x', ord $1/eg; # encode
+ my $original = "Colon : Hash # Percent %";
- s/%([A-Fa-f\d]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # decode
- s/%([[:xdigit:]]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # same thing
+ my $escaped = uri_escape( $original )
-However, you should only apply them to individual URI components, not
-the entire URI, otherwise you'll lose information and generally mess
-things up. If that didn't explain it, don't worry. Just go read
-section 2 of the RFC, it's probably the best explanation there is.
+ print "$string\n"; # 'Colon%20%3A%20Hash%20%23%20Percent%20%25%20'
-RFC 2396 also contains a lot of other useful information, including a
-regexp for breaking any arbitrary URI into components (Appendix B).
+To decode the string, use the C<uri_unescape> function:
+
+ my $unescaped = uri_unescape( $escaped );
+
+ print $unescaped; # back to original
+
+If you wanted to do it yourself, you simply need to replace the
+reserved characters with their encodings. A global substitution
+is one way to do it:
+
+ # encode
+ $string =~ s/([^^A-Za-z0-9\-_.!~*'()])/ sprintf "%%%0x", ord $1 /eg;
+
+ #decode
+ $string =~ s/%([A-Fa-f\d]{2})/chr hex $1/eg;
=head2 How do I redirect to another page?
Use of CGI.pm is strongly recommended. This example shows redirection
with a complete URL. This redirection is handled by the web browser.
- use CGI qw/:standard/;
-
- my $url = 'http://www.cpan.org/';
- print redirect($url);
+ use CGI qw/:standard/;
+ my $url = 'http://www.cpan.org/';
+ print redirect($url);
This example shows a redirection with an absolute URLpath. This
redirection is handled by the local web server.
- my $url = '/CPAN/index.html';
- print redirect($url);
-
+ my $url = '/CPAN/index.html';
+ print redirect($url);
But if coded directly, it could be as follows (the final "\n" is
shown separately, for clarity), using either a complete URL or
an absolute URLpath.
- print "Location: $url\n"; # CGI response header
- print "\n"; # end of headers
-
+ print "Location: $url\n"; # CGI response header
+ print "\n"; # end of headers
=head2 How do I put a password on my web pages?
To enable authentication for your web server, you need to configure
your web server. The configuration is different for different sorts
-of web servers---apache does it differently from iPlanet which does
+of web servers--apache does it differently from iPlanet which does
it differently from IIS. Check your web server documentation for
the details for your particular server.
a DBI compatible driver. HTTPD::UserAdmin supports files used by the
"Basic" and "Digest" authentication schemes. Here's an example:
- use HTTPD::UserAdmin ();
- HTTPD::UserAdmin
+ use HTTPD::UserAdmin ();
+ HTTPD::UserAdmin
->new(DB => "/foo/.htpasswd")
->add($username => $password);
For a quick-and-dirty solution, try this solution derived
from L<perlfunc/split>:
- $/ = '';
- $header = <MSG>;
- $header =~ s/\n\s+/ /g; # merge continuation lines
- %head = ( UNIX_FROM_LINE, split /^([-\w]+):\s*/m, $header );
+ $/ = '';
+ $header = <MSG>;
+ $header =~ s/\n\s+/ /g; # merge continuation lines
+ %head = ( UNIX_FROM_LINE, split /^([-\w]+):\s*/m, $header );
That solution doesn't do well if, for example, you're trying to
maintain all the Received lines. A more complete approach is to use
=head2 How do I check a valid mail address?
-You can't, at least, not in real time. Bummer, eh?
+(partly contributed by Aaron Sherman)
-Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a human
-on the other end to answer you, you cannot determine whether a mail
-address is valid. Even if you apply the mail header standard, you
-can have problems, because there are deliverable addresses that aren't
-RFC-822 (the mail header standard) compliant, and addresses that aren't
-deliverable which are compliant.
-
-You can use the Email::Valid or RFC::RFC822::Address which check
-the format of the address, although they cannot actually tell you
-if it is a deliverable address (i.e. that mail to the address
-will not bounce). Modules like Mail::CheckUser and Mail::EXPN
-try to interact with the domain name system or particular
-mail servers to learn even more, but their methods do not
-work everywhere---especially for security conscious administrators.
-
-Many are tempted to try to eliminate many frequently-invalid
-mail addresses with a simple regex, such as
-C</^[\w.-]+\@(?:[\w-]+\.)+\w+$/>. It's a very bad idea. However,
-this also throws out many valid ones, and says nothing about
-potential deliverability, so it is not suggested. Instead, see
-http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/ckaddr.gz ,
-which actually checks against the full RFC spec (except for nested
-comments), looks for addresses you may not wish to accept mail to
-(say, Bill Clinton or your postmaster), and then makes sure that the
-hostname given can be looked up in the DNS MX records. It's not fast,
-but it works for what it tries to do.
+This isn't as simple a question as it sounds. There are two parts:
-Our best advice for verifying a person's mail address is to have them
-enter their address twice, just as you normally do to change a password.
-This usually weeds out typos. If both versions match, send
-mail to that address with a personal message that looks somewhat like:
+a) How do I verify that an email address is correctly formatted?
- Dear someuser@host.com,
+b) How do I verify that an email address targets a valid recipient?
- Please confirm the mail address you gave us Wed May 6 09:38:41
- MDT 1998 by replying to this message. Include the string
- "Rumpelstiltskin" in that reply, but spelled in reverse; that is,
- start with "Nik...". Once this is done, your confirmed address will
- be entered into our records.
+Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a human
+on the other end to answer you, you cannot fully answer part I<b>, but
+either the C<Email::Valid> or the C<RFC::RFC822::Address> module will do
+both part I<a> and part I<b> as far as you can in real-time.
+
+If you want to just check part I<a> to see that the address is valid
+according to the mail header standard with a simple regular expression,
+you can have problems, because there are deliverable addresses that
+aren't RFC-2822 (the latest mail header standard) compliant, and
+addresses that aren't deliverable which, are compliant. However, the
+following will match valid RFC-2822 addresses that do not have comments,
+folding whitespace, or any other obsolete or non-essential elements.
+This I<just> matches the address itself:
+
+ my $atom = qr{[a-zA-Z0-9_!#\$\%&'*+/=?\^`{}~|\-]+};
+ my $dot_atom = qr{$atom(?:\.$atom)*};
+ my $quoted = qr{"(?:\\[^\r\n]|[^\\"])*"};
+ my $local = qr{(?:$dot_atom|$quoted)};
+ my $quotedpair = qr{\\[\x00-\x09\x0B-\x0c\x0e-\x7e]};
+ my $domain_lit = qr{\[(?:$quotedpair|[\x21-\x5a\x5e-\x7e])*\]};
+ my $domain = qr{(?:$dot_atom|$domain_lit)};
+ my $addr_spec = qr{$local\@$domain};
+
+Just match an address against C</^${addr_spec}$/> to see if it follows
+the RFC2822 specification. However, because it is impossible to be
+sure that such a correctly formed address is actually the correct way
+to reach a particular person or even has a mailbox associated with it,
+you must be very careful about how you use this.
-If you get the message back and they've followed your directions,
-you can be reasonably assured that it's real.
+Our best advice for verifying a person's mail address is to have them
+enter their address twice, just as you normally do to change a
+password. This usually weeds out typos. If both versions match, send
+mail to that address with a personal message. If you get the message
+back and they've followed your directions, you can be reasonably
+assured that it's real.
A related strategy that's less open to forgery is to give them a PIN
(personal ID number). Record the address and PIN (best that it be a
-random one) for later processing. In the mail you send, ask them to
+random one) for later processing. In the mail you send, ask them to
include the PIN in their reply. But if it bounces, or the message is
included via a "vacation" script, it'll be there anyway. So it's
best to ask them to mail back a slight alteration of the PIN, such as
The MIME-Base64 package (available from CPAN) handles this as well as
the MIME/QP encoding. Decoding BASE64 becomes as simple as:
- use MIME::Base64;
- $decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
+ use MIME::Base64;
+ $decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
The MIME-Tools package (available from CPAN) supports extraction with
decoding of BASE64 encoded attachments and content directly from email
a more direct approach is to use the unpack() function's "u"
format after minor transliterations:
- tr#A-Za-z0-9+/##cd; # remove non-base64 chars
- tr#A-Za-z0-9+/# -_#; # convert to uuencoded format
- $len = pack("c", 32 + 0.75*length); # compute length byte
- print unpack("u", $len . $_); # uudecode and print
+ tr#A-Za-z0-9+/##cd; # remove non-base64 chars
+ tr#A-Za-z0-9+/# -_#; # convert to uuencoded format
+ $len = pack("c", 32 + 0.75*length); # compute length byte
+ print unpack("u", $len . $_); # uudecode and print
=head2 How do I return the user's mail address?
Sys::Hostname module (which is part of the standard perl distribution),
you can probably try using something like this:
- use Sys::Hostname;
- $address = sprintf('%s@%s', scalar getpwuid($<), hostname);
+ use Sys::Hostname;
+ $address = sprintf('%s@%s', scalar getpwuid($<), hostname);
Company policies on mail address can mean that this generates addresses
that the company's mail system will not accept, so you should ask for
Use the C<sendmail> program directly:
- open(SENDMAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t -odq")
- or die "Can't fork for sendmail: $!\n";
- print SENDMAIL <<"EOF";
- From: User Originating Mail <me\@host>
- To: Final Destination <you\@otherhost>
- Subject: A relevant subject line
+ open(SENDMAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t -odq")
+ or die "Can't fork for sendmail: $!\n";
+ print SENDMAIL <<"EOF";
+ From: User Originating Mail <me\@host>
+ To: Final Destination <you\@otherhost>
+ Subject: A relevant subject line
- Body of the message goes here after the blank line
- in as many lines as you like.
- EOF
- close(SENDMAIL) or warn "sendmail didn't close nicely";
+ Body of the message goes here after the blank line
+ in as many lines as you like.
+ EOF
+ close(SENDMAIL) or warn "sendmail didn't close nicely";
The B<-oi> option prevents sendmail from interpreting a line consisting
of a single dot as "end of message". The B<-t> option says to use the
Or you might be able use the CPAN module Mail::Mailer:
- use Mail::Mailer;
+ use Mail::Mailer;
- $mailer = Mail::Mailer->new();
- $mailer->open({ From => $from_address,
- To => $to_address,
- Subject => $subject,
- })
- or die "Can't open: $!\n";
- print $mailer $body;
- $mailer->close();
+ $mailer = Mail::Mailer->new();
+ $mailer->open({ From => $from_address,
+ To => $to_address,
+ Subject => $subject,
+ })
+ or die "Can't open: $!\n";
+ print $mailer $body;
+ $mailer->close();
The Mail::Internet module uses Net::SMTP which is less Unix-centric than
Mail::Mailer, but less reliable. Avoid raw SMTP commands. There
This answer is extracted directly from the MIME::Lite documentation.
Create a multipart message (i.e., one with attachments).
- use MIME::Lite;
+ use MIME::Lite;
- ### Create a new multipart message:
- $msg = MIME::Lite->new(
- From =>'me@myhost.com',
- To =>'you@yourhost.com',
- Cc =>'some@other.com, some@more.com',
- Subject =>'A message with 2 parts...',
- Type =>'multipart/mixed'
- );
+ ### Create a new multipart message:
+ $msg = MIME::Lite->new(
+ From =>'me@myhost.com',
+ To =>'you@yourhost.com',
+ Cc =>'some@other.com, some@more.com',
+ Subject =>'A message with 2 parts...',
+ Type =>'multipart/mixed'
+ );
- ### Add parts (each "attach" has same arguments as "new"):
- $msg->attach(Type =>'TEXT',
- Data =>"Here's the GIF file you wanted"
- );
- $msg->attach(Type =>'image/gif',
- Path =>'aaa000123.gif',
- Filename =>'logo.gif'
- );
+ ### Add parts (each "attach" has same arguments as "new"):
+ $msg->attach(Type =>'TEXT',
+ Data =>"Here's the GIF file you wanted"
+ );
+ $msg->attach(Type =>'image/gif',
+ Path =>'aaa000123.gif',
+ Filename =>'logo.gif'
+ );
- $text = $msg->as_string;
+ $text = $msg->as_string;
MIME::Lite also includes a method for sending these things.
- $msg->send;
+ $msg->send;
This defaults to using L<sendmail> but can be customized to use
SMTP via L<Net::SMTP>.
of the MailTools package), often a module is overkill. Here's a
mail sorter.
- #!/usr/bin/perl
-
- my(@msgs, @sub);
- my $msgno = -1;
- $/ = ''; # paragraph reads
- while (<>) {
- if (/^From /m) {
- /^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi;
- $sub[++$msgno] = lc($1) || '';
- }
- $msgs[$msgno] .= $_;
- }
- for my $i (sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msgs)) {
- print $msgs[$i];
- }
+ #!/usr/bin/perl
+
+ my(@msgs, @sub);
+ my $msgno = -1;
+ $/ = ''; # paragraph reads
+ while (<>) {
+ if (/^From /m) {
+ /^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi;
+ $sub[++$msgno] = lc($1) || '';
+ }
+ $msgs[$msgno] .= $_;
+ }
+ for my $i (sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msgs)) {
+ print $msgs[$i];
+ }
Or more succinctly,
- #!/usr/bin/perl -n00
- # bysub2 - awkish sort-by-subject
- BEGIN { $msgno = -1 }
- $sub[++$msgno] = (/^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi)[0] if /^From/m;
- $msg[$msgno] .= $_;
- END { print @msg[ sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msg) ] }
+ #!/usr/bin/perl -n00
+ # bysub2 - awkish sort-by-subject
+ BEGIN { $msgno = -1 }
+ $sub[++$msgno] = (/^Subject:\s*(?:Re:\s*)*(.*)/mi)[0] if /^From/m;
+ $msg[$msgno] .= $_;
+ END { print @msg[ sort { $sub[$a] cmp $sub[$b] || $a <=> $b } (0 .. $#msg) ] }
=head2 How do I find out my hostname, domainname, or IP address?
X<hostname, domainname, IP address, host, domain, hostfqdn, inet_ntoa,
form (a.b.c.d) that most people expect, use the C<inet_ntoa> function
from the <Socket> module, which also comes with perl.
- use Socket;
+ use Socket;
- my $address = inet_ntoa(
- scalar gethostbyname( $host || 'localhost' )
- );
+ my $address = inet_ntoa(
+ scalar gethostbyname( $host || 'localhost' )
+ );
=head2 How do I fetch a news article or the active newsgroups?
Use the Net::NNTP or News::NNTPClient modules, both available from CPAN.
This can make tasks like fetching the newsgroup list as simple as
- perl -MNews::NNTPClient
- -e 'print News::NNTPClient->new->list("newsgroups")'
+ perl -MNews::NNTPClient
+ -e 'print News::NNTPClient->new->list("newsgroups")'
=head2 How do I fetch/put an FTP file?
=head1 REVISION
-Revision: $Revision: 3606 $
+Revision: $Revision$
-Date: $Date: 2006-03-06 12:05:47 +0100 (lun, 06 mar 2006) $
+Date: $Date$
See L<perlfaq> for source control details and availability.
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
-Copyright (c) 1997-2006 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
+Copyright (c) 1997-2009 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
other authors as noted. All rights reserved.
This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff