=head1 NAME
-perlfaq9 - Networking ($Revision: 8539 $)
+perlfaq9 - Networking
=head1 DESCRIPTION
The CGI specification is outlined in an informational RFC:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3875
-Other relevant documentation listed in: http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
-
These Perl FAQs very selectively cover some CGI issues. However, Perl
-programmers are strongly advised to use the CGI.pm module, to take care
+programmers are strongly advised to use the C<CGI.pm> module, to take care
of the details for them.
The similarity between CGI response headers (defined in the CGI
to be terminated with carriage-return and line-feed, i.e ASCII \015\012
written in binary mode.
-Using CGI.pm gives excellent platform independence, including EBCDIC
-systems. CGI.pm selects an appropriate newline representation
-($CGI::CRLF) and sets binmode as appropriate.
-
-=head2 My CGI script runs from the command line but not the browser. (500 Server Error)
-
-Several things could be wrong. You can go through the "Troubleshooting
-Perl CGI scripts" guide at
+Using C<CGI.pm> gives excellent platform independence, including EBCDIC
+systems. C<CGI.pm> selects an appropriate newline representation
+(C<$CGI::CRLF>) and sets binmode as appropriate.
- http://www.perl.org/troubleshooting_CGI.html
+=head2 My CGI script runs from the command line but not the browser. (500 Server Error)
-If, after that, you can demonstrate that you've read the FAQs and that
-your problem isn't something simple that can be easily answered, you'll
-probably receive a courteous and useful reply to your question if you
-post it on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi (if it's something to do
-with HTTP or the CGI protocols). Questions that appear to be Perl
-questions but are really CGI ones that are posted to comp.lang.perl.misc
-are not so well received.
-
-The useful FAQs, related documents, and troubleshooting guides are
-listed in the CGI Meta FAQ:
+(contributed by brian d foy)
- http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
+There are many things that might be wrong with your CGI program, and only
+some of them might be related to Perl. Try going through the troubleshooting
+guide on Perlmonks:
+ http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=380424
=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
-normal Carp modules C<carp>, C<croak>, and C<confess> functions with
+Use the C<CGI::Carp> module. It replaces C<warn> and C<die>, plus the
+normal C<Carp> modules C<carp>, C<croak>, and C<confess> functions with
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:
+The following use of C<CGI::Carp> also redirects errors to a file of your choice,
+placed in a C<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.
=head2 How do I remove HTML from a string?
-The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is to use HTML::Parser
+The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is to use C<HTML::Parser>
from CPAN. Another mostly correct
-way is to use HTML::FormatText which not only removes HTML but also
+way is to use C<HTML::FormatText> which not only removes HTML but also
attempts to do a little simple formatting of the resulting plain text.
Many folks attempt a simple-minded regular expression approach, like
Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works for most files:
- #!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
- s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\1)*>//gs
+ #!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
+ s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\g1)*>//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?
C<HTML::SimpleLinkExtor> as an example for something specifically
suited to your needs.
-You can use URI::Find to extract URLs from an arbitrary text document.
+You can use C<URI::Find> to extract URLs from an arbitrary text document.
Less complete solutions involving regular expressions can save
you a lot of processing time if you know that the input is simple. One
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* (["']) (.*?) \g1
+ \s* >
+ }gsix;
=head2 How do I download a file from the user's machine? How do I open a file on another machine?
forms. You allow the web surfer to specify a file to send to your web
server. To you it looks like a download, and to the user it looks
like an upload. No matter what you call it, you do it with what's
-known as B<multipart/form-data> encoding. The CGI.pm module (which
+known as B<multipart/form-data> encoding. The C<CGI.pm> module (which
comes with Perl as part of the Standard Library) supports this in the
-start_multipart_form() method, which isn't the same as the startform()
+C<start_multipart_form()> method, which isn't the same as the C<startform()>
method.
-See the section in the CGI.pm documentation on file uploads for code
+See the section in the C<CGI.pm> documentation on file uploads for code
examples and details.
=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
+The C<CGI.pm> module (which comes with Perl) has functions to create
+the HTML form widgets. See the C<CGI.pm> documentation for more
examples.
use CGI qw/:standard/;
start_form,
"What's your favorite animal? ",
- popup_menu(
- -name => 'animal',
+ popup_menu(
+ -name => 'animal',
-values => [ qw( Llama Alpaca Camel Ram ) ]
),
- submit,
-
- end_form,
- end_html;
+ submit,
+ 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:
- $html_code = `lynx -source $url`;
- $text_data = `lynx -dump $url`;
+ use LWP::Simple qw(get);
-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:
+ my $html = get( "http://www.example.com/index.html" );
- # simplest version
- use LWP::Simple;
- $content = get($URL);
+It can also store the resource directly in a file:
- # or print HTML from a URL
- use LWP::Simple;
- getprint "http://www.linpro.no/lwp/";
+ use LWP::Simple qw(getstore);
- # 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;
+ getstore( "http://www.example.com/index.html", "foo.html" );
+
+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>.
+
+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.
+
+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 C<URI::Escape> module. The C<uri_escape> function
+returns the escaped string:
+
+ my $original = "Colon : Hash # Percent %";
+
+ my $escaped = uri_escape( $original );
-If you are writing a CGI script, you should be using the CGI.pm module
-that comes with perl, or some other equivalent module. The CGI module
-automatically decodes queries for you, and provides an escape()
-function to handle encoding.
+ print "$escaped\n"; # 'Colon%20%3A%20Hash%20%23%20Percent%20%25'
-The best source of detailed information on URI encoding is RFC 2396.
-Basically, the following substitutions do it:
+To decode the string, use the C<uri_unescape> function:
- s/([^\w()'*~!.-])/sprintf '%%%02x', ord $1/eg; # encode
+ my $unescaped = uri_unescape( $escaped );
- s/%([A-Fa-f\d]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # decode
- s/%([[:xdigit:]]{2})/chr hex $1/eg; # same thing
+ print $unescaped; # back to 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.
+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:
-RFC 2396 also contains a lot of other useful information, including a
-regexp for breaking any arbitrary URI into components (Appendix B).
+ # 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?
the server without any HTTP redirection. The CGI specifications do not
allow relative URLs in either case.
-Use of CGI.pm is strongly recommended. This example shows redirection
+Use of C<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: $url\n"; # CGI response header
+ print "\n"; # end of headers
=head2 How do I put a password on my web pages?
=head2 How do I edit my .htpasswd and .htgroup files with Perl?
-The HTTPD::UserAdmin and HTTPD::GroupAdmin modules provide a
+The C<HTTPD::UserAdmin> and C<HTTPD::GroupAdmin> modules provide a
consistent OO interface to these files, regardless of how they're
stored. Databases may be text, dbm, Berkeley DB or any database with
-a DBI compatible driver. HTTPD::UserAdmin supports files used by the
+a DBI compatible driver. C<HTTPD::UserAdmin> supports files used by the
"Basic" and "Digest" authentication schemes. Here's an example:
- use HTTPD::UserAdmin ();
- HTTPD::UserAdmin
+ use HTTPD::UserAdmin ();
+ HTTPD::UserAdmin
->new(DB => "/foo/.htpasswd")
->add($username => $password);
=head2 How do I make sure users can't enter values into a form that cause my CGI script to do bad things?
-See the security references listed in the CGI Meta FAQ
+(contributed by brian d foy)
+
+You can't really prevent people from sending your script bad data, at
+least not with Perl, which works on the server side. If you want to
+prevent data that try to use SQL injection or other sorts of attacks
+(and you should want to), you have to not trust any data that enter
+your program.
- http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
+The L<perlsec> documentation has general advice about data security.
+If you are using the C<DBI> module, use placeholder to fill in data.
+If you are running external programs with C<system> or C<exec>, use
+the list forms. There are many other precautions that you should take,
+too many to list here, and most of them fall under the category of not
+using any data that you don't intend to use. Trust no one.
=head2 How do I parse a mail header?
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
-the Mail::Header module from CPAN (part of the MailTools package).
+the C<Mail::Header> module from CPAN (part of the C<MailTools> package).
=head2 How do I decode a CGI form?
(contributed by brian d foy)
-Use the CGI.pm module that comes with Perl. It's quick,
+Use the C<CGI.pm> module that comes with Perl. It's quick,
it's easy, and it actually does quite a bit of work to
ensure things happen correctly. It handles GET, POST, and
HEAD requests, multipart forms, multivalued fields, query
string and message body combinations, and many other things
you probably don't want to think about.
-It doesn't get much easier: the CGI module automatically
+It doesn't get much easier: the C<CGI.pm> module automatically
parses the input and makes each value available through the
C<param()> function.
my @items = param( 'item' ); # multiple values, same field name
-If you want an object-oriented approach, CGI.pm can do that too.
+If you want an object-oriented approach, C<CGI.pm> can do that too.
use CGI;
my @items = $cgi->param( 'item' );
-You might also try CGI::Minimal which is a lightweight version
+You might also try C<CGI::Minimal> which is a lightweight version
of the same thing. Other CGI::* modules on CPAN might work better
for you, too.
Many people try to write their own decoder (or copy one from
another program) and then run into one of the many "gotchas"
-of the task. It's much easier and less hassle to use CGI.pm.
+of the task. It's much easier and less hassle to use C<CGI.pm>.
=head2 How do I check a valid mail address?
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 $domain_lit = qr{\[(?:\\\S|[\x21-\x5a\x5e-\x7e])*\]};
- my $domain = qr{(?:$dot_atom|$domain_lit)};
- my $addr_spec = qr{$local\@$domain};
+ 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
=head2 How do I decode a MIME/BASE64 string?
-The MIME-Base64 package (available from CPAN) handles this as well as
+The C<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
+The C<MIME-Tools> package (available from CPAN) supports extraction with
decoding of BASE64 encoded attachments and content directly from email
messages.
If the string to decode is short (less than 84 bytes long)
-a more direct approach is to use the unpack() function's "u"
+a more direct approach is to use the C<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?
-On systems that support getpwuid, the $< variable, and the
-Sys::Hostname module (which is part of the standard perl distribution),
+On systems that support getpwuid, the C<< $< >> variable, and the
+C<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
users' mail addresses when this matters. Furthermore, not all systems
on which Perl runs are so forthcoming with this information as is Unix.
-The Mail::Util module from CPAN (part of the MailTools package) provides a
-mailaddress() function that tries to guess the mail address of the user.
+The C<Mail::Util> module from CPAN (part of the C<MailTools> package) provides a
+C<mailaddress()> function that tries to guess the mail address of the user.
It makes a more intelligent guess than the code above, using information
given when the module was installed, but it could still be incorrect.
Again, the best way is often just to ask the user.
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
+The B<-oi> option prevents C<sendmail> from interpreting a line consisting
of a single dot as "end of message". The B<-t> option says to use the
headers to decide who to send the message to, and B<-odq> says to put
the message into the queue. This last option means your message won't
be immediately delivered, so leave it out if you want immediate
delivery.
-Alternate, less convenient approaches include calling mail (sometimes
-called mailx) directly or simply opening up port 25 have having an
+Alternate, less convenient approaches include calling C<mail> (sometimes
+called C<mailx>) directly or simply opening up port 25 have having an
intimate conversation between just you and the remote SMTP daemon,
-probably sendmail.
+probably C<sendmail>.
-Or you might be able use the CPAN module Mail::Mailer:
+Or you might be able use the CPAN module C<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
-are many reasons to use a mail transport agent like sendmail. These
+The C<Mail::Internet> module uses C<Net::SMTP> which is less Unix-centric than
+C<Mail::Mailer>, but less reliable. Avoid raw SMTP commands. There
+are many reasons to use a mail transport agent like C<sendmail>. These
include queuing, MX records, and security.
=head2 How do I use MIME to make an attachment to a mail message?
-This answer is extracted directly from the MIME::Lite documentation.
+This answer is extracted directly from the C<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.
+C<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>.
=head2 How do I read mail?
-While you could use the Mail::Folder module from CPAN (part of the
-MailFolder package) or the Mail::Internet module from CPAN (part
-of the MailTools package), often a module is overkill. Here's a
+While you could use the C<Mail::Folder> module from CPAN (part of the
+C<MailFolder> package) or the C<Mail::Internet> module from CPAN (part
+of the C<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,
(contributed by brian d foy)
-The Net::Domain module, which is part of the standard distribution starting
+The C<Net::Domain> module, which is part of the standard distribution starting
in perl5.7.3, can get you the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), the host
name, or the domain name.
To get the IP address, you can use the C<gethostbyname> built-in function
to turn the name into a number. To turn that number into the dotted octet
form (a.b.c.d) that most people expect, use the C<inet_ntoa> function
-from the <Socket> module, which also comes with perl.
+from the C<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.
+Use the C<Net::NNTP> or C<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?
-LWP::Simple (available from CPAN) can fetch but not put. Net::FTP (also
-available from CPAN) is more complex but can put as well as fetch.
+(contributed by brian d foy)
-=head2 How can I do RPC in Perl?
+The C<LWP> family of modules (available on CPAN as the libwww-perl distibution)
+can work with FTP just like it can with many other protocols. C<LWP::Simple>
+makes it quite easy to fetch a file:
-(Contributed by brian d foy)
+ use LWP::Simple;
-Use one of the RPC modules you can find on CPAN (
-http://search.cpan.org/search?query=RPC&mode=all ).
+ my $data = get( 'ftp://some.ftp.site/some/file.txt' );
-=head1 REVISION
+If you want more direct or low-level control of the FTP process, you can use
+the C<Net::FTP> module (in the Standard Library since Perl 5.8). It's
+documentation has examples showing you just how to do that.
-Revision: $Revision: 8539 $
+=head2 How can I do RPC in Perl?
-Date: $Date: 2007-01-11 00:07:14 +0100 (jeu, 11 jan 2007) $
+(contributed by brian d foy)
-See L<perlfaq> for source control details and availability.
+Use one of the RPC modules you can find on CPAN (
+http://search.cpan.org/search?query=RPC&mode=all ).
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
-Copyright (c) 1997-2007 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
+Copyright (c) 1997-2010 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