UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Programming PHP and Server-side Scripting Perl newbie needs some help here ...

Okay, this should be simple enough: I am using a redirect cgi script that gets commands from a dropdown list on a web page. I'd like to use an URL string "-" as kind of a "menu separator" that does not do nothing, but makes the dropdown menu look better.

The problem is that whenever a "-" link is selected from the page, I get 500 error when the script goes haywire.I've tried adding some if's to avoid the situation, but I think the main reason is that script execution does not end properly, it "leaks" into the following subroutine or something?

Here's the script:


I've tried this, but it does not help.

It's not legal for a CGI script to "do nothing". The script must output a response header, such as a normal Content-type header or a Location header.

For the "-" case, you could redirect to the same page, or you could output an error page.

Try it with CGI.pm instead of the gross readparse routine (which is old, outdated, and unsupported)

#!/usr/bin/perl

use CGI qw/:standard/;

my $gotourl = param('url');
redirect($gotourl) unless $gotourl =~ /-/;

# Remainder of code here.


(I dont have time to verify that all works ok, but that should be a starting point for you)
--mark

[ March 21, 2001: Message edited by: Mark Badolato ]

Is the drop box on a page and that calls the script? If so try this:


----------------

Just add it to your page code for the drop box in the places you need it!

Okay, I got it working by making a compromise, and redirecting user to my 404 page if he selected a non-existant link ... one final question:

How do I make my browser show the url where the script has redirected it into? Now the browser's url line says "http://www.b5itf-finland.org/redirect.cgi" ???

Edit: Add to that, on pages that I've gone into using the redirect script have "http://www.b5itf-finland.org/scripts" as their relative URL, so all relative href's on these pages had to be replaced with absolutes ... I'd like to use relative ones.

Part of the code here, just to clarify:


[ March 24, 2001: Message edited by: VJ ]

According to CGI Programming with Perl, URLs can be divided into three types:

• Absolute URL - http://hostname/dir/file.ext
• Relative URL with full path - /dir/file.ext
• Relative URL with relative path - dir/file.ext

The second case supposedly produces an internal redirect, which would result in the behavior you're seeing.

I've included all this detail because I've had trouble with it myself, and am hoping that someone more knowledgeable will jump in and expand on this

^ Bump ^ -- [beg mode] anybody? [/beg mode]

To do what you want, use Javascript!

I want to use Javascript as little as possible to overcome browser problems, hence the cgi redirect. Sorry, can't fo.

use html instead of
print "Location : $gotourl";

e.g.

print "";
such things like that~~~@_@

Immidiate meta redirect? Why didn't I think of that. Thanks ... will try.