Apache::ASP -- CGI Migration
July 17, 2000
As we crowed about earlier, one of the luxuries of Apache::ASP is that we
can quickly and easily integrate existing CGI-based Perl scripts into new
(or old) HTML templates. How easily? Imagine we have a Perl script,
newnews.cgi, that retrieves the newest news article from a database
of articles. We won't worry about the details of this Perl script, except to
say that it output only the article text without surrounding decoration.
Now, with Apache::ASP installed, we want to integrate the newest news
article into an elaborate HTML page, so that the article appears within a
specific portion of the page.
newspage.asp
<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>The Newest News of the Day</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY>
<!-- blah blah blah ... -->
<TABLE WIDTH='80%'>
<TR>
<TD WIDTH='20%'>
<!-- lefthand column of table code -->
</TD>
<TD WIDTH='80%'>
<!-- righthand column of table,
where Perl-generated news article will appear -->
<% do "/www/htdocs/cgi-bin/newnews.cgi" %>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE></BODY></HTML>
How easy was that? The opening tag <% denotes the start of an ASP
section. In this ASP section, all we do is call an external script, whose
results will appear in this spot in the web page. The ASP section is closed
with the %> tag. The ASP module, which handles this page, knows to
pass any CGI parameters into the environment. So, if we wanted to send some
parameters to newnews.cgi, we can simply send those parameters to
newspage.asp, via either the GET or POST methods. For example, a
"GET" form submission that yielded:
newspage.asp?date=071100
Would pass the date parameter into the CGI environment, and any
included scripts, such as newnews.cgi, will transparently access this
CGI parameter through the CGI.pm module. This is why no changes need be made
to the original CGI script.
Apache::ASP -- Setup
The Perl You Need to Know
Apache::ASP -- Ebony and Ivory Living Together in Harmony
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