Using Modules

In the previous page, you saw how to create a Guestbook using perl. Now we will see how to do it using modules - in our case the CGI module. A module is just a set of related functions in a library file, i.e., a Perl package with the same name as the file. It is specifically designed to be reusable by other modules or programs. You can think of a module as the fundamental unit of reusable Perl code.

Some very useful modules are given below. Using this while programming will assure that you have a high quality end product.

Using the modules are easy - just write 'use <ModuleName>;' at the top of the file. A tiny example...

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $subject = "World";
print "Hello, $subject";

To see the list of all available modules, see the manual. But before using any of these modules, make sure you have them. If not get them from http://www.cpan.org/.

The module we are most concerned about right now is the CGI module. CGI module phases the form results for you - so a lot of coding can be avoided. An example...

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;

my $cgi = new CGI;

# Get input
my $name    = $cgi -> param('name');
my $email   = $cgi -> param('email');
my $loc     = $cgi -> param('loc');
my $comments= $cgi -> param('comments');

This will replace these lines in the GuestBook script given in the last page.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

my $query_string = "";
#Get the input
if ($ENV{REQUEST_METHOD} eq 'POST') {
read(STDIN, $query_string, $ENV{CONTENT_LENGTH});
} else {
$query_string = $ENV{QUERY_STRING};
}

# Split the name-value pairs
@pairs = split(/&/, $query_string);

foreach $pair (@pairs) {
   ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);

   # Making the input English. And removing unwanted things
   $value =~ tr/+/ /;
   $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;

   $FORM{$name} = $value;
}

CGI.pm makes it easy to create html files and parse form contents. One can use it to create HTML tags. I generally prefer to do this myself, but here is an example - the full GuestBook Program - using CGI.pm

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI;

my $cgi = new CGI;

# Get input
my $name    = $cgi -> param('name');
my $email   = $cgi -> param('email');
my $loc     = $cgi -> param('loc');
my $comments= $cgi -> param('comments');

#Give output - create HTML using CGI module.
print $cgi -> header,
	$cgi -> start_html('GuestBook Result'),
	$cgi -> h1("Guest book Results");
print "<p>Dear $name,<br>
Thank You for filling out our Guest Book.
I appreciate this effort in your part.</p>";

print $cgi -> table(
	$cgi -> Tr( $cgi -> td(['Name',"$name"]) ),
	$cgi -> Tr( $cgi -> td(['E-Mail',
		"<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</a>"]) ),
	$cgi -> Tr( $cgi -> td(['Location',"$loc"]) ),
	$cgi -> Tr( $cgi -> td(['Comments',"$comments"]) )
);
print $cgi -> end_html;

# Open Guest Book File
open (FILE, ">>guests.txt") || die "Can't open guests.txt: $!\n";
#Write the information to the file
print FILE "$name came from $loc. ";
print FILE "E-mail address is $email. ";
print FILE "Comments : $comments\n"; 
close(FILE);

A better(and more complete) guestbook script using CGI module that I wrote can be found here. See manual to know more about what you can do with CGI module.