CGI Programming 101: Chapter 4: Processing Forms

The text and programs here are from the first edition of CGI Programming 101. This has been replaced by the 2nd edition; please click here to view the updated material from the 2nd edition.

	Name	Description
	post.txt	Form Processor (source code)
	post.html	Form Example
	mail.txt	Form-To-Mail CGI (source code)
	mail.html	Form-To-Mail Example

FAQ's:

How do I have my CGI read an existing Thanks.html file and display that, rather than putting all of the HTML code inside the CGI?

Here's how. In your CGI, just open the HTML file, read it, then print it back out:

  open(INF,"Thanks.html");
  @thanks = <INF>;
  close(INF);

  print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";
  print @thanks;
  

How can I make my form-to-mail CGI print the variables to the email in the same order they were entered on the form?

You'll find that if you use the above form-to-mail CGI, which does a foreach $key (keys(%FORM)) to print the form values, you'll get the values in random order. To print them in the order they appear on the form, you can add this line to the form-decoding block:

  push(@keys, $name);
  

Then you'll change your foreach line to foreach $key (@keys).

Here is the full source code showing how to do this:

mail2.txt

Form-To-Mail CGI (source code) (sorted output)