path: root/pod/perlfaq9.pod

=head1 NAME

perlfaq9 - Networking

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This section deals with questions related to networking, the internet,
and a few on the web.

=head2 What is the correct form of response from a CGI script?

(Alan Flavell <flavell+www@a5.ph.gla.ac.uk> answers...)

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) specifies a software interface between
a program ("CGI script") and a web server (HTTPD). It is not specific
to Perl, and has its own FAQs and tutorials, and usenet group,
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi

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 C<CGI.pm> module, to take care
of the details for them.

The similarity between CGI response headers (defined in the CGI
specification) and HTTP response headers (defined in the HTTP
specification, RFC2616) is intentional, but can sometimes be confusing.

The CGI specification defines two kinds of script: the "Parsed Header"
script, and the "Non Parsed Header" (NPH) script. Check your server
documentation to see what it supports. "Parsed Header" scripts are
simpler in various respects. The CGI specification allows any of the
usual newline representations in the CGI response (it's the server's
job to create an accurate HTTP response based on it). So "\n" written in
text mode is technically correct, and recommended. NPH scripts are more
tricky: they must put out a complete and accurate set of HTTP
transaction response headers; the HTTP specification calls for records
to be terminated with carriage-return and line-feed, i.e ASCII \015\012
written in binary mode.

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.

=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

	http://www.perl.org/troubleshooting_CGI.html

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:

	http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html

=head2 How can I get better error messages from a CGI program?

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";

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);
	}

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";

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.
Normal warnings still go out to the server error log (or wherever
you've sent them with C<carpout>) with the application name and date
stamp prepended.

=head2 How do I remove HTML from a string?

The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is to use C<HTML::Parser>
from CPAN.  Another mostly correct
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
C<< s/<.*?>//g >>, but that fails in many cases because the tags
may continue over line breaks, they may contain quoted angle-brackets,
or HTML comment may be present.  Plus, folks forget to convert
entities--like C<&lt;> for example.

Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works for most files:

	#!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
	s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\1)*>//gs

If you want a more complete solution, see the 3-stage striphtml
program in
http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/striphtml.gz
.

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">

	<!-- <A comment> -->

	<script>if (a<b && a>c)</script>

	<# Just data #>

	<![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>
	-->

=head2 How do I extract URLs?

You can easily extract all sorts of URLs from HTML with
C<HTML::SimpleLinkExtor> which handles anchors, images, objects,
frames, and many other tags that can contain a URL.  If you need
anything more complex, you can create your own subclass of
C<HTML::LinkExtor> or C<HTML::Parser>.  You might even use
C<HTML::SimpleLinkExtor> as an example for something specifically
suited to your needs.

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
solution from Tom Christiansen runs 100 times faster than most
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;

=head2 How do I download a file from the user's machine?  How do I open a file on another machine?

In this case, download means to use the file upload feature of HTML
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 C<CGI.pm> module (which
comes with Perl as part of the Standard Library) supports this in the
C<start_multipart_form()> method, which isn't the same as the C<startform()>
method.

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 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/;
	print header,
		start_html('Favorite Animals'),

		start_form,
			"What's your favorite animal? ",
		popup_menu(
			-name   => 'animal',
			-values => [ qw( Llama Alpaca Camel Ram ) ]
			),
		submit,

		end_form,
		end_html;

=head2 How do I fetch an HTML file?

(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:

	use LWP::Simple qw(get);

	my $html = get( "http://www.example.com/index.html" );

It can also store the resource directly in a file:

	use LWP::Simple qw(getstore);

	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 are doing something complex, such as moving through many pages
and forms or a web site, you can use C<WWW::Mechanize>.  See its
documentation for all the details.

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;

	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;

	$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 the C<URI::Escape> module. The C<uri_escape> function
returns the escaped string:

	my $original = "Colon : Hash # Percent %";

	my $escaped = uri_escape( $original );

	print "$escaped\n"; # 'Colon%20%3A%20Hash%20%23%20Percent%20%25'

To decode the string, use the C<uri_unescape> function:

	my $unescaped = uri_unescape( $escaped );

	print $unescaped; # back to original

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:

	# 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?

Specify the complete URL of the destination (even if it is on the same
server). This is one of the two different kinds of CGI "Location:"
responses which are defined in the CGI specification for a Parsed Headers
script. The other kind (an absolute URLpath) is resolved internally to
the server without any HTTP redirection. The CGI specifications do not
allow relative URLs in either case.

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);

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);

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

=head2 How do I put a password on my web pages?

To enable authentication for your web server, you need to configure
your web server.  The configuration is different for different sorts
of web servers--apache does it differently from iPlanet which does
it differently from IIS.  Check your web server documentation for
the details for your particular server.

=head2 How do I edit my .htpasswd and .htgroup files with Perl?

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.  C<HTTPD::UserAdmin> supports files used by the
"Basic" and "Digest" authentication schemes.  Here's an example:

	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

	http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html

=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 );

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 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 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 C<CGI.pm> module automatically
parses the input and makes each value available through the
C<param()> function.

	use CGI qw(:standard);

	my $total = param( 'price' ) + param( 'shipping' );

	my @items = param( 'item' ); # multiple values, same field name

If you want an object-oriented approach, C<CGI.pm> can do that too.

	use CGI;

	my $cgi = CGI->new();

	my $total = $cgi->param( 'price' ) + $cgi->param( 'shipping' );

	my @items = $cgi->param( 'item' );

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 C<CGI.pm>.

=head2 How do I check a valid mail address?

(partly contributed by Aaron Sherman)

This isn't as simple a question as it sounds.  There are two parts:

a) How do I verify that an email address is correctly formatted?

b) How do I verify that an email address targets a valid recipient?

Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a human
on the other end to answer you, you cannot fully answer part I<b>, but
either the C<Email::Valid> or the C<RFC::RFC822::Address> module will do
both part I<a> and part I<b> as far as you can in real-time.

If you want to just check part I<a> to see that the address is valid
according to the mail header standard with a simple regular expression,
you can have problems, because there are deliverable addresses that
aren't RFC-2822 (the latest mail header standard) compliant, and
addresses that aren't deliverable which, are compliant.  However,  the
following will match valid RFC-2822 addresses that do not have comments,
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 $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
sure that such a correctly formed address is actually the correct way
to reach a particular person or even has a mailbox associated with it,
you must be very careful about how you use this.

Our best advice for verifying a person's mail address is to have them
enter their address twice, just as you normally do to change a
password. This usually weeds out typos. If both versions match, send
mail to that address with a personal message. If you get the message
back and they've followed your directions, you can be reasonably
assured that it's real.

A related strategy that's less open to forgery is to give them a PIN
(personal ID number).  Record the address and PIN (best that it be a
random one) for later processing. In the mail you send, ask them to
include the PIN in their reply.  But if it bounces, or the message is
included via a "vacation" script, it'll be there anyway.  So it's
best to ask them to mail back a slight alteration of the PIN, such as
with the characters reversed, one added or subtracted to each digit, etc.

=head2 How do I decode a MIME/BASE64 string?

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);

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 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

=head2 How do I return the user's mail address?

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);

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 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.

=head2 How do I send mail?

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

	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 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 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 C<sendmail>.

Or you might be able use the CPAN module C<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();

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 C<MIME::Lite> documentation.
Create a multipart message (i.e., one with attachments).

	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'
				 );

	### 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;

C<MIME::Lite> also includes a method for sending these things.

	$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 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];
	}

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) ] }

=head2 How do I find out my hostname, domainname, or IP address?
X<hostname, domainname, IP address, host, domain, hostfqdn, inet_ntoa,
gethostbyname, Socket, Net::Domain, Sys::Hostname>

(contributed by brian d foy)

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.

	use Net::Domain qw(hostname hostfqdn hostdomain);

	my $host = hostfqdn();

The C<Sys::Hostname> module, included in the standard distribution since
perl5.6, can also get the hostname.

	use Sys::Hostname;

	$host = hostname();

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 C<Socket> module, which also comes with perl.

	use Socket;

	my $address = inet_ntoa(
		scalar gethostbyname( $host || 'localhost' )
		);

=head2 How do I fetch a news article or the active newsgroups?

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")'

=head2 How do I fetch/put an FTP file?

C<LWP::Simple> (available from CPAN) can fetch but not put.  C<Net::FTP> (also
available from CPAN) is more complex but can put as well as fetch.

=head2 How can I do RPC in Perl?

(Contributed by brian d foy)

Use one of the RPC modules you can find on CPAN (
http://search.cpan.org/search?query=RPC&mode=all ).

=head1 REVISION

Revision: $Revision$

Date: $Date$

See L<perlfaq> for source control details and availability.

=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1997-2009 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
other authors as noted. All rights reserved.

This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.

Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in this file
are hereby placed into the public domain.  You are permitted and
encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun
or for profit as you see fit.  A simple comment in the code giving
credit would be courteous but is not required.