[VisualActive]

I'm still learning Object Oriented Programming but I have a question:

When I use the function br_queries and edit it so instead of print the value of
$IN{'act'}
you need to use
$IN->{'act'}

my only problem is that you get the absolute value of that variable with the %20 and all. When you use $IN{'act'} instead of $IN->{'act'} you don't get that.

here is the function/method:

sub br_queries
{
my ($string,%IN,@IN,$dat);
if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'GET') { $string = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'}; }
else { read(STDIN, $string, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'}); }
@IN = split(/&/, $string);
foreach (@IN)
{
split(/=/, $_);
$_[0] =~ s/\+/ /g;
$_[0] =~ s/\// /g;
$_[0] =~ s/\\/ /g;
$_[0] =~ s/%00//g;
$_[0] =~ s/%0a/newline/g;
$_[0] =~ s/(?:(\?)|&|[&;])s=[\w\d]{16,32}(?:&|&|;|$)//g;
$_[0] =~ s/%(..)/pack("c", hex($1))/ge;
if(defined($IN{$_[0]}))
{
$IN{$_[0]} .= "\0";
$IN{$_[0]} .= "$_[1]";
}
else
{
$IN{"$_[0]"} = $_[1];
}
}
foreach (keys %IN)
{
$IN{"$_"} =~ s/\+/ /g;
$IN{"$_"} =~ s/\// /g;
$IN{"$_"} =~ s/\\/ /g;
$IN{"$_"} =~ s/%00//g;
$IN{"$_"} =~ s/%0a/newline/g;
$IN{"$_"} =~ s/(?:(\?)|&|[&;])s=[\w\d]{16,32}(?:&|&|;|$)//g;
$IN{"$_"} =~ s/%(..)/pack("c", hex($1))/ge;
}
foreach (%IN)
{
$dat->{$_[0]} = $_[1];
}
return($dat);
}

[Chas]

I don't quite understand your question, can you rephrase possibly? I do have a question for you though. Is there any reason you're not using the CGI module to grab your query string? It's a standard Perl module and it sure beats reinventing the wheel:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Don't import anything by default and use the 
# OOP interface to minimize overhead
use CGI;

# Create your new query CGI object
my $IN = CGI->new;

# Get a value from a formfield or query string parameter
my $value = $IN->param('form_field');

# Do something useful with $value here

Anyhow, if you can be a bit more specific with your question, I can try to help you out with your code.

~Charlie

[VisualActive]

Ok, sorry about the confusion.

I am, as you can see, trying to parse the query string from the URI after a form is submitted for example. The routine does this fine but I the output is a hash in the form of $IN{''}. I want the output to be like this $IN->{''}. Since I added the foreach simple to do this, it works fine except that ASCII characters aren't being converted for example, %20 (a space).

I submit this: ?act=This%20is%20a%20string%20with%20spaces.

With the routine without the foreach command for the conversion, it works perfectly.

It prints this: This is a string with spaces.

With the foreach command some ASCII characters are left unchanged and

It prints this: This%20is%20a%20string%20with%20spaces.

[Chas]

Hi VisualActive,

I think I get what you're after now. See if this helps:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use CGI::Carp qw/fatalsToBrowser/;

sub br_queries  {
  my ($string, $dat);
  if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'GET') { $string = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'}; }
  else { read(STDIN, $string, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'}); }

  # Regexes are expensive (CPU wise), do it as little as possible.  I see no
  # need to do it on every interation in your loop below.
  $string =~ s/\+/ /g;
  $string =~ s/\// /g;
  $string =~ s/\\/ /g;
  $string =~ s/%00//g;
  $string =~ s/%0a/newline/g;
  $string =~ s/(?:(\?)|&|[&;])s=[\w\d]{16,32}(?:&|&|;|$)//g;
  $string =~ s/%(..)/pack("c", hex($1))/ge;
  
  # If you are trying to put it in a hashref instead of a hash, do it from
  # the get-go.  Don't put it into a hash then iterate over it again to put
  # it in a hashref.
  foreach my $pair (split /&|;/, $string) {
    # It's much more readable if you use varialbe names here for your
    # keys and values
    my ($key, $value) = split /=/, $pair;
    if(defined $dat->{$key}) {
      $dat->{$key} .= "\0", $value;
    }
    else {
      $dat->{$key} = $value;
    }
  }
  return $dat;
}

# A quick test to see if it works
my $IN = br_queries;

print "Content-Type: Text/HTML\n\n";
print "<pre>\n";
print "Query string:\n";
print "-------------\n";
print "Key: $_ - Value: $IN->{$_}\n" for keys %$IN;
print "-------------\n";
print "</pre>\n";

I still highly reccomend that you look into using the CGI.pm module I linked to above. Unless you are required to do this for a school project the CGI module is a tried and tested system for doing this and is a standard perl module.

~Charlie

[VisualActive]

Nice ward Chas! I appreciate your help, thank you.