first steps with mod_perl

[email protected] (Marek) Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:46:19 -0700
Newsgroups	perl.beginners.cgi
Organization	http://groups.google.com
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hello all,


I am trying, to understand the Perl module CGI.pm and have two little
questions. First my exercizes:

#! /usr/bin/perl -wT

use strict;
use CGI::Carp qw(warningsToBrowser fatalsToBrowser);
use CGI qw/:standard/;
use Socket;

####my VARS################

my $email     =  "anexample\@example.com";
my $url       =  "http://something.com";
my %colours   = (
	      red => "#ff0000",
	      green => "#00ff00",
	      blue => "#0000ff",
	      black => "#000000",
	      white => "#ffffff"
	      );

my $hostname  = gethostbyaddr(inet_aton($ENV{REMOTE_ADDR}), AF_INET);

my $ua = $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT};

####END my VARS#############

print header,

start_html(-title=>'Hello World, Address, Colours',
	   -head=>[Link({-rel=>'stylesheet',
		   -href=>'../styles/style.css',
		   -type=>'text/css',
		   -media=>'screen'})
		   ]
		 ),
h1('Hello World!'),
p('And this is a comment to my first Hello World Script!'),

p("My email is $email and my webpage is",
    a({-href=>"$url"},"example.org"));

print "<p>";

foreach my $colour (keys %colours) {
	print qq(<span style="class:time1; color:$colours{$colour}">$colour</
span><br />\n);
    }
print "</p>";

print p("Welcome, dear Visitor from <em>$hostname</em> !");

print "<p>";

print "Your Browser is: $ua<br /><br />";
if ($ua =~ /MSIE/){
    print "your browser is Internet Explorer!<br /><br />";
} elsif ($ua =~ /Netscape/i){
    print "your browser is Netscape!<br /><br />";
} elsif ($ua =~ /Safari/i){
    print "your browser is Safari! Most likely your Operating System
is Macintosh! Isn't it?<br /><br />";
} elsif ($ua =~ /Opera/i){
    print "your browser is Opera!<br /><br />";
} elsif ($ua =~ /Mozilla/i){
    print "your browser is probably Mozilla!<br /><br />";
} elsif ($ua =~ /Lynx/i){
    print "your browser is probably Lynx!<br /><br />";
} else {
    print "I give up! Don't know which Browser you are using!<br /
><br />";
}

print "</p>";

print hr({-class=>'guest3'}),
start_form,
p("What's your name? ",textfield('name')),
p("What's the combination? ",
checkbox_group(-name=>'words',
			  -values=>['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'],
			  -defaults=>['eenie','minie'])),
p("What's your favorite color? ",
popup_menu(-name=>'color',
		  -values=>['red','green','blue','chartreuse']),
submit),
end_form,
hr({-class=>'guest3'});

if (param()) {
my $name      = param('name');
my $keywords  = join ', ',param('words');
my $color     = param('color');
print "Your name is ",em(escapeHTML($name)),p,
	"The keywords are: ",em(escapeHTML($keywords)),p,
	"Your favorite color is ",em(escapeHTML($color)),
	hr({-class=>'guest3'});
}

print hr({-class=>'guest3'}),
end_html;

First question: this cgi script inserts an strange DOC-Type, from
which I have never heard off:

<!DOCTYPE html
	PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.0//EN"
	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/xhtml-basic10.dtd">

May I force mod_perl to insert an other doc-type? For example:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Or is this probably the configuration on the server, where I have no
control to insert a strict-xhtml Header?
By the way: I am unable to make a syntax-check with BBEdit (on
Macintosh) with the Basic-Doc type. Is there a Perl module or an other
way, to check the syntax of this xhtml doc-type in my Shell?

I am trying to produce valid html. And my next question concerns the
form-syntax. My cgi script produces the following:

<form method="post" action="/cgi-bin/first.cgi" enctype="application/x-
www-form-urlencoded">
	<p>
		What's your name? <input type="text" name="name" />
	</p>
	<p>
		What's the combination? <input type="checkbox" name="words"
value="eenie" checked />eenie <input type="checkbox" name="words"
value="meenie" />meenie <input type="checkbox" name="words"
value="minie" checked />minie <input type="checkbox" name="words"
value="moe" />moe
	</p>
	<p>
		What's your favorite color? <select name="color">
			<option value="red">
				red
			</option>
			<option value="green">
				green
			</option>
			<option value="blue">
				blue
			</option>
			<option value="chartreuse">
				chartreuse
			</option>
		</select> <input type="submit" name=".submit" />
	</p>
	<input type="hidden" name=".cgifields" value="words" />
</form>

Under xhtml-sctrict should be inserted: checked="checked"! How to
achieve this?


thank you for your patience

marek