Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with web and perl

Help me avoid coding a lame webpage!

perrce — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:07:18 -0800

I need a simple cgi-bin script that implements a scoreboard or counter for multiple teams. So a buddy of mine wants a simple web page that allows a handful of users to log in, view the scores of other teams, and increment or set their own score. For example, if you logged in as John, you might see something resembling:



Tim: 12

Pete: 9

John: 13 + -

Luke: 10

The + and - above would be buttons that John could use to increment his score (or maybe it's a text box with a submit button). Basically, he's looking for something really simple (a simple Perl cgi-bin script would be fine), and security is basically a non-issue.

This is something I could probably put together in perl in a couple hours, but the script he needs is state-of-the-art circa 1997, and there's really nothing that interests me beyond the fact that a friend's requested it. Besides, this has got to have been implemented before and I'd rather reuse than rewrite. I did some Google searches, but came up empty. Anyone have any suggestions for something that will work out of the box, or something close that I can modify?

Yet Another File Manager Question

larsks — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:07:36 -0800

Help me find an online file manager that doesn't suck! Everything I've found so far falls into two categories, either (a) sucking, a lot, or (b) requiring, for inexplicable reasons, a database backend. I just want something that will handle file uploads and basic file management (move, rename, delete, copy). The solution should not try to provide any form of authentication. This is what my web server is for! Bonus points if it has (a) actually been touched in the past few years, (b) makes good use of CSS and (c) does a good job of separating logic and presentation in the code, because this makes my life much easier if I need to change something. I am reasonably language neutral -- in no particular order, Python, Perl, and PHP are preferable, because those are already installed on the target system and I'd like to avoid introducing any additional requirements.

I am trying to avoid getting a number of non-technical people to install WinSCP, since, among other things, this means I wouldn't be able to take advantage of our web single sign-on infrastructure. I would also like to provide people access that does not first require software installation.

How do I make simple dynamic web pages using perl?

zzztimbo — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:24:58 -0800

How should I develop simple dynamic web pages using perl? Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to produce simple web pages in perl that execute logic (e.g., opening property documents to retrieve property values and saving back changes). I am new to perl and would like some detail instructions or links to tutorials. Would a framework like Mason be overkill?

Live AIS data is a web browser

kaozity — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:55:58 -0800

Hi, Another oddball question... I have a live data stream of AIS data and I would like to take the data and ultimately display it on a world map through a web browser. The problem is that I have no clue as to how I would display live updated information on a map. I would like the map to update as the stream of data is coming in. This might be an ambitious project for someone who is weak on web programming, but i figured it would be worth looking into.

Can I write to a div using Perl, or otherwise solve my form submission problem?

unsigned — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:11:10 -0800

Can I write to a div using Perl, or otherwise solve my form submission problem? I have a Perl/CGI form mailer script that I didn't write and shouldn't edit too much, but can somewhat.

It's currently set up so that I can define the thank you page and error page within the Perl file. I don't want it to redirect to those pages however. I want to display the messages on the page the form is on instead, without reloading if possible. I played around with redirecting to the same page but appending a parameter in the URL. Then using JS to show a div if that var was set. But I'm realizing I need to display some of the items submitted from the form and I don't know how to keep those values since the page is being refreshed.

I don't know Perl so I don't know if there is a better way to do this, but can I do something like write to a div with Perl? Other ideas?

Make Apache recognize Perl!

kaozity — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:49:15 -0800

How can I get my web server to interpret perl I am playing around with perl for the first time in my life. I am using a fedora core 8 machine. It seems to ave all the essentials installed already (apache, php, mySQL, and perl). However, I make a file called perl.pl and it does not seem to translate correctly. Here is what is in the file:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html \n\n"; #HTTP HEADER

# DEFINE SOME SCALAR VARIABLES
$number = "5";
$exponent = "2 ** 8";
$string = "Hello, PERL!";
$stringpart_1 = "Hello, ";
$stringpart_2 = "PERL!";
$linebreak = "
"; #HTML LINEBREAK TAG

# PRINT THEM TO THE BROWSER
print $number;
print $linebreak;
print $exponent;
print $linebreak;
print $string.$linebreak;
print $stringpart_1.$stringpart_2;

When you go the the browser, you see the following
http://[ip address]/perl/perl.pl

As you can see, you prints out exactly what I type. Am I doing anything wrong? Am I suppose to enable a perl service or change a configuration file?

Other frameworks akin to Ruby on Rails?

killdevil — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:14:49 -0800

What are the best database-driven Web application development frameworks out there right now? More specifically, please orient me to toolsets you know of that are similar to Ruby on Rails. I have a couple of database-oriented Web applications I'll be working on in the near future. I'd love to avoid (re)writing lots of the low-level code (recordset handling, security, user input validation, &c, &c, &c ) that every such application needs in order to function, as I've done numerous times in the past. Rather than dust off some of my own home-rolled libraries, I'd rather take the time to choose and learn one of the integrated open-source frameworks that have come into being over the past few years.

I know of Ruby on Rails, obviously, and have heard of a a couple of python-based frameworks that seem philosophically similar to RoR. Please note that I'm totally language-agnostic -- I'm quite handy with all the languages that form the "P" in "LAMP" and with some others as well, but I don't mind picking up some new syntax if it'll simplify my development task in the end.

Help me understand my options!

Moving web-based business to a new web coder without falling flat on our faces?

unclemonty — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:47:46 -0800

We're losing a freelance, outsourced web coder that our business relies upon. How do we find and then transition over to someone new without losing loads of money and time? Story inside. I co-own a small London-based company which does a lot of its business via the web. Our service involves a reasonably complex backend that does everything from customer management to dynamic updating of certain website components, accepting payments from our customers and delivering documents to them.

This has all been coded in CGI / Perl by an Indian programmer who we found almost by accident five years ago and has been amazing to work with over the past few years.

Unfortunately he is now letting us down and despite our best efforts to get him involved, offering more money and so on, we can barely make contact with him. His business has expanded but also apparently he's suffering some legal action.

We have the site and database backed up, and it's hosted at a location separate to the designer. But we need to move ahead and get the site completely refreshed; we already have a new graphical frontend and CSS to integrate, not to mention various new components spec'd but not built for the backend. So we need to find someone to examine our existing code, understand it, and start to help us maintain and update it.

Ideally we'd like like a freelancer for regular work - we'd prefer it if they were in our timezone, better still in London, so we can get in touch easily. And they need to be pretty sharp at CGI / Perl to understand the existing stuff. But what problems are we likely to face and what are the classic mistakes we could make during this transition? What should we ask for when selecting a new coder, and where would we look? Metafilter Jobs seems like a possibility but doesn't seem to have a lot of UK traffic.

Web scraping onling banking sites?

mphuie — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 16:28:36 -0800

Is there an tool/tutorial to web scrape secure sites like Online Banking or other sites that make sure that it's you that is logging in? I've been self learning web scraping and found it extremely useful, building proxies for my Nokia tablet, automation, through Perl & LWP.

I want to write something that will grab my bank balance, but those online banking sites seem to go through lots of hoops to make sure you are the one sitting at your computer trying to login.

I've tried deciphering all the tactics they use, javascripts, cookies, but it seems like theres more tricks they are using that I don't know about.

Is there some util that lets you analyze the actual behind the scenes events, headers, cookies, etc.. so I can just repeat them?

A low level tool would be great, but I'd be happy with a web recorder/automation program that would log me in (based on keystrokes, etc) and save the html so I could get my balance.

Getting hired as telecommuter software engineer?

SomePerlGeek — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 10:56:29 -0800

I am an experienced software engineer and was laid off recently. I'm currently applying for positions. My ideal would be a telecommuting gig, which is the type of position I had most recently. A certain job mailing list I subscribe to has a lot of promising positions, but many of them are marked "onsite". Here's my question: shall I apply for some of these "onsite" positions in the hope that my qualifications will impress the hiring person enough to consider hiring me as a telecommuter? Or would this just be a waste of time for everyone concerned? Obviously, I would carefully consider whether the job as described actually seemed to require someone's physical presence, and not apply if that were the case.

But my impression is that a lot of people/companies have perhaps not really considered the option of hiring someone who would work offsite, and might be open to it if there were a well-qualified candidate with a proven track record as a telecommuter (e.g. me).

Refresh vs. Form Re-submission

purephase — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 10:54:09 -0800

Form re-submission woes! How can I catch page refreshes and prevent form values from being re-submitted? I've read a lot on the subject and tried varying tactics to counteract the problem. From hidden form variables and plain old user education, no methodology has worked quite as well as I had anticipated upon implementation. However, a lot of sites seem fairly successful in protecting against this problem so there must be something I'm missing (well, more than one something).

What am I missing? Does anyone have any tried-and-true methods that they've used? If so, are their any caveats to your preferred method?

(This is particularly for Perl/PHP with Apache and/or IIS. I'm hoping for one solution that can be modularized for varying projects, but anything is appreciated.)

Separating vhosts in combined apache logfile?

joshwa — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 17:17:14 -0800

I am in a shared hosting environment, but I host multiple domains using mod_rewrite. Of course, this means all the domains get lumped together in one logfile. I need to be able to separate the individual domains for log analysis, without using a CustomLog statement. Let's take care of the obvious: I can't afford individual accounts for each domain, or upgrading to a dedicated server. I don't have access to httpd.conf, so I can't use with accompanying CustomLog statements.

It would seem that one would be able to infer which request is for which domain by looking at requests in aggregate (e.g. first request is for "/" with the referring page as the referrer, and the second request is for the page's style sheet, graphics, etc, with the requested domain's docroot as the referrer. )

I suppose some perl is the answer, but that's a frightening prospect for me. There's got to be a way to either tag or otherwise indicate in the log entry which domain is being requested, somewhere in .htaccess (where the mod_rewrite rules live, and which is the only apache config to which I have access).

Possible ideas: Can RewriteLog be hacked to do this? Or I could do an AddHandler to a shell script that created the appropriate logs, but that would create serious performance issues.

Or perhaps there's a way to do this in Sawmill, my logfile analyser.

I can't be the only one in this situation, but Google has yielded zilch.

Perl, CGI, and Apache

IshmaelGraves — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:56:58 -0800

I have a Perl script which is supposed to handle user registration. It works fine from the command line (perl blah.pl "username=blah&password=blah") but doesn't modify the file it's supposed to modify when run as a CGI script in Apache 2.0. I'm assuming this is some sort of permissions issue, but I've done chmod a+w and chmod 777 on the file in question and still no luck. Is there something I need in my httpd.conf?

Apologies if this is a really inane question, but my brain is fried right now and the Apache docs might as well be Greek.

(Also: I know I shouldn't keep my user data in a file. Eventually I will switch to some sort of SQL database. For the moment, though, I'd like to get the authentication crap out of the way so I can work on the fun bits of my webapp.)

Transforming XML with XSL

riffola — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 17:01:47 -0800

I need a new way of transforming XML with XSL. Till date I've used PHP's Sablotron, which I absolutely love and is simple to use, but my host keeps forgetting to enable and include it each time they recompile Apache, so I was wondering if someone here knows of a way to do the same with either Perl or JSP/Tomcat or even PHP as long as it is without Sablotron's xslt_create(). The PHP code I use is beautifully simple.



<?php

ob_start("ob_gzhandler");

   $tivonp = xslt_create();

   $result = xslt_process($tivonp, 'nowplaying.xml', 'nowplaying.xsl');

   echo $result;

   xslt_free($tivonp);

?>

I'm hoping there is a similar simple way to transform XML using XSL in other languages.

Grabbing a file via auth HTTPS

riffola — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:11:16 -0800

Using a PHP, Perl, or cron, how do I grab a xml page from a my TiVo that requires https authorization? I have the username and password. Here's what the url with the username and password looks like. https://<login>:<pass>@<tivo-ip>/TiVoConnect?Command=QueryContainer&Container=/NowPlaying&Recurse=Yes

I don't have access to wget on my hosted site, and cURL didn't work for me. I keep getting bad authorization errors with it.

Need replacement for Formmail and NMS Formmail

Pinwheel — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:54:05 -0800

Due to "security concerns," my web host provider has just banned two Form-to-email scripts (Formmail and NMS Formmail). Now I'm hard up to find a replacement. Any ideas? I'd prefer a solution that doesn't require a mastery of PERL to configure.

I need a script to compare files in a directory to files referenced in web pages.

pissfactory — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:37:38 -0800

Can anyone recommend a program (in say perl or java or something) that will execute on my linux web server and a) slurp the file references in the pages (html, php) and b) compare them to the actual files in my web root tree giving me a list of all of the unreferenced files (not referenced on public web pages)? I want to clean up this junky file system, but I don't want to break any links and I inherited the mess. Thanks.

Is it difficult to change to LAMP/Java from ASP/.NET? Is the open source thing really sticking?

grefo — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 07:40:13 -0800

I have been looking at changing my web development focus from Windows/ASP/.NET to LAMP(Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) because my gut is telling me that this is where things are going. Oh, Java should be in there as well.

What's the skinny on LAMP in the real world (Netcraft surveys aside)? Is it difficult to change to LAMP/Java? Is the open source thing really sticking?