[davidk19380]

Here's teh scenario... we have an affiliate program. A form allows users to either apply as a new affiliate, or come back and get their html code with their affiliate number in the html code. This hasn't worked for some time, and we are finally trying to figure out why. The script is broken into 3 parts...
The first part is if a coderequest is made... that part works fine. The second part is where the problem was happening. It is for people who are applying to become an affiliate. The script is supposed to check to make sure that all the required fields are filled, then it checks to make sure the entries are valid (correct format, etc.). Once these are met, then it checks the database to see if the user already exists... blah blah blah... all of that code works correctly. The problem is the snippet of code below. This WAS placed before all the error checking and db connecting. When it was first, clicking on the "accept" button would take you directly to the "html code page" with a notice that the user already exists, and all the HTML code had blank affiliate IDs.

What is the basic function of the snippet below, and why would our script always behave as if ($ENV{HTTP_COOKIE}) is always true? As I said, if we put all the meat and potatoes programming ahead of this snippet, everything works fine (for our purpose).

Here's the snippet:

if ($ENV{HTTP_COOKIE}) {
my %cookies = &getCookies;
if ($cookies{AffiliateID}) { $clientID = $cookies{AffiliateID}; }
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "User Already Exists<br>\n";
&print_welcome;
exit;
}

can someone explain this to me?

here is the getCookies subroutine:

sub getCookies {
# cookies are seperated by a semicolon and a space, this will split
# them and return a hash of cookies
@rawCookies = split (/; /,$ENV{'HTTP_COOKIE'});

foreach(@rawCookies){
($key, $val) = split (/=/,$_);
$cookies{$key} = $val;
}

return %cookies;


Hopefully someone can give me a better explanation of what is happening here and why the script would ALWAYS run through that first snippet and then exit the script.

Thanks in advance
David

[Millennium]

It appears as though the script is just trying to save some time by checking if a person/user already has a cookie file that identifies them as already existing. The sub routine:

Code:

sub getCookies {
# cookies are seperated by a semicolon and a space, this will split
# them and return a hash of cookies
@rawCookies = split (/; /,$ENV{'HTTP_COOKIE'});

foreach(@rawCookies){
($key, $val) = split (/=/,$_);
$cookies{$key} = $val;
}

is just reading a cookie file stored on the users computer. The cookie file is in a specific format:

key=value;key=value;key=value

the script first splits up the cookie into an array by splitting the cookie on the semi-colon so it gets:

@rawCookies= ('key=value','key=value','key=value');

then it loops through that array and splits the key/value pairs into a hash: %cookies:

$cookies{$keys} = $value;

and return the hash back to the caller:

return %cookies;

one of those hash keys is evidently 'AffiliateID' which lets your script know the user already exists if it finds this inthe cookie file. Of course many people block cookies so the user may have to login or something else so your script knows they already exist.