Provided by: libcgi-pm-perl_4.63-1_all 
NAME
CGI - Handle Common Gateway Interface requests and responses
SYNOPSIS
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
# create a CGI object (query) for use
my $q = CGI->new;
# Process an HTTP request
my @values = $q->multi_param('form_field');
my $value = $q->param('param_name');
my $fh = $q->upload('file_field');
my $riddle = $q->cookie('riddle_name');
my %answers = $q->cookie('answers');
# Prepare various HTTP responses
print $q->header();
print $q->header('application/json');
my $cookie1 = $q->cookie(
-name => 'riddle_name',
-value => "The Sphynx's Question"
);
my $cookie2 = $q->cookie(
-name => 'answers',
-value => \%answers
);
print $q->header(
-type => 'image/gif',
-expires => '+3d',
-cookie => [ $cookie1,$cookie2 ]
);
print $q->redirect('http://somewhere.else/in/movie/land');
DESCRIPTION
CGI.pm is a stable, complete and mature solution for processing and preparing HTTP requests and
responses. Major features including processing form submissions, file uploads, reading and writing
cookies, query string generation and manipulation, and processing and preparing HTTP headers.
CGI.pm performs very well in a vanilla CGI.pm environment and also comes with built-in support for
mod_perl and mod_perl2 as well as FastCGI.
It has the benefit of having developed and refined over 20 years with input from dozens of contributors
and being deployed on thousands of websites. CGI.pm was included in the perl distribution from perl v5.4
to v5.20, however is has now been removed from the perl core...
CGI.pm HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE PERL CORE
<http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/commitdiff/e9fa5a80>
If you upgrade to a new version of perl or if you rely on a system or vendor perl and get an updated
version of perl through a system update, then you will have to install CGI.pm yourself with cpan/cpanm/a
vendor package/manually. To make this a little easier the CGI::Fast module has been split into its own
distribution, meaning you do not need access to a compiler to install CGI.pm
The rationale for this decision is that CGI.pm is no longer considered good practice for developing web
applications, including quick prototyping and small web scripts. There are far better, cleaner, quicker,
easier, safer, more scalable, more extensible, more modern alternatives available at this point in time.
These will be documented with CGI::Alternatives.
For more discussion on the removal of CGI.pm from core please see:
<http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/05/msg202130.html>
Note that the v4 releases of CGI.pm will retain back compatibility as much as possible, however you may
need to make some minor changes to your code if you are using deprecated methods or some of the more
obscure features of the module. If you plan to upgrade to v4.00 and beyond you should read the Changes
file for more information and test your code against CGI.pm before deploying it.
HTML Generation functions should no longer be used
All HTML generation functions within CGI.pm are no longer being maintained. Any issues, bugs, or patches
will be rejected unless they relate to fundamentally broken page rendering.
The rationale for this is that the HTML generation functions of CGI.pm are an obfuscation at best and a
maintenance nightmare at worst. You should be using a template engine for better separation of concerns.
See CGI::Alternatives for an example of using CGI.pm with the Template::Toolkit module.
These functions, and perldoc for them, are considered deprecated, they are no longer being maintained and
no fixes or features for them will be accepted. They will, however, continue to exist in CGI.pm without
any deprecation warnings ("soft" deprecation) so you can continue to use them if you really want to. All
documentation for these functions has been moved to CGI::HTML::Functions.
Programming style
There are two styles of programming with CGI.pm, an object-oriented (OO) style and a function-oriented
style. You are recommended to use the OO style as CGI.pm will create an internal default object when the
functions are called procedurally and you will not have to worry about method names clashing with perl
builtins.
In the object-oriented style you create one or more CGI objects and then use object methods to create the
various elements of the page. Each CGI object starts out with the list of named parameters that were
passed to your CGI script by the server. You can modify the objects, save them to a file or database and
recreate them. Because each object corresponds to the "state" of the CGI script, and because each
object's parameter list is independent of the others, this allows you to save the state of the script and
restore it later.
For example, using the object oriented style:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI; # load CGI routines
my $q = CGI->new; # create new CGI object
print $q->header; # create the HTTP header
In the function-oriented style, there is one default CGI object that you rarely deal with directly.
Instead you just call functions to retrieve CGI parameters, manage cookies, and so on. The following
example is identical to above, in terms of output, but uses the function-oriented interface. The main
differences are that we now need to import a set of functions into our name space (usually the "standard"
functions), and we don't need to create the CGI object.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI qw/:standard/; # load standard CGI routines
print header(); # create the HTTP header
The examples in this document mainly use the object-oriented style. See HOW TO IMPORT FUNCTIONS for
important information on function-oriented programming in CGI.pm
Calling CGI.pm routines
Most CGI.pm routines accept several arguments, sometimes as many as 20 optional ones! To simplify this
interface, all routines use a named argument calling style that looks like this:
print $q->header(
-type => 'image/gif',
-expires => '+3d',
);
Each argument name is preceded by a dash. Neither case nor order matters in the argument list: -type,
-Type, and -TYPE are all acceptable. In fact, only the first argument needs to begin with a dash. If a
dash is present in the first argument CGI.pm assumes dashes for the subsequent ones.
Several routines are commonly called with just one argument. In the case of these routines you can
provide the single argument without an argument name. header() happens to be one of these routines. In
this case, the single argument is the document type.
print $q->header('text/html');
Other such routines are documented below.
Sometimes named arguments expect a scalar, sometimes a reference to an array, and sometimes a reference
to a hash. Often, you can pass any type of argument and the routine will do whatever is most appropriate.
For example, the param() routine is used to set a CGI parameter to a single or a multi-valued value. The
two cases are shown below:
$q->param(
-name => 'veggie',
-value => 'tomato',
);
$q->param(
-name => 'veggie',
-value => [ qw/tomato tomahto potato potahto/ ],
);
Many routines will do something useful with a named argument that it doesn't recognize. For example, you
can produce non-standard HTTP header fields by providing them as named arguments:
print $q->header(
-type => 'text/html',
-cost => 'Three smackers',
-annoyance_level => 'high',
-complaints_to => 'bit bucket',
);
This will produce the following nonstandard HTTP header:
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Cost: Three smackers
Annoyance-level: high
Complaints-to: bit bucket
Content-type: text/html
Notice the way that underscores are translated automatically into hyphens.
Creating a new query object (object-oriented style)
my $q = CGI->new;
This will parse the input (from POST, GET and DELETE methods) and store it into a perl5 object called $q.
Note that because the input parsing happens at object instantiation you have to set any CGI package
variables that control parsing before you call CGI->new.
Any filehandles from file uploads will have their position reset to the beginning of the file.
Creating a new query object from an input file
my $q = CGI->new( $input_filehandle );
If you provide a file handle to the new() method, it will read parameters from the file (or STDIN, or
whatever). The file can be in any of the forms describing below under debugging (i.e. a series of newline
delimited TAG=VALUE pairs will work). Conveniently, this type of file is created by the save() method
(see below). Multiple records can be saved and restored.
Perl purists will be pleased to know that this syntax accepts references to file handles, or even
references to filehandle globs, which is the "official" way to pass a filehandle. You can also initialize
the CGI object with a FileHandle or IO::File object.
If you are using the function-oriented interface and want to initialize CGI state from a file handle, the
way to do this is with restore_parameters(). This will (re)initialize the default CGI object from the
indicated file handle.
open( my $in_fh,'<',"test.in") || die "Couldn't open test.in for read: $!";
restore_parameters( $in_fh );
close( $in_fh );
You can also initialize the query object from a hash reference:
my $q = CGI->new( {
'dinosaur' => 'barney',
'song' => 'I love you',
'friends' => [ qw/ Jessica George Nancy / ]
} );
or from a properly formatted, URL-escaped query string:
my $q = CGI->new('dinosaur=barney&color=purple');
or from a previously existing CGI object (currently this clones the parameter list, but none of the other
object-specific fields, such as autoescaping):
my $old_query = CGI->new;
my $new_query = CGI->new($old_query);
To create an empty query, initialize it from an empty string or hash:
my $empty_query = CGI->new("");
-or-
my $empty_query = CGI->new({});
Fetching a list of keywords from the query
my @keywords = $q->keywords
If the script was invoked as the result of an ISINDEX search, the parsed keywords can be obtained as an
array using the keywords() method.
Fetching the names of all the parameters passed to your script
my @names = $q->multi_param
my @names = $q->param
If the script was invoked with a parameter list (e.g. "name1=value1&name2=value2&name3=value3"), the
param() / multi_param() methods will return the parameter names as a list. If the script was invoked as
an ISINDEX script and contains a string without ampersands (e.g. "value1+value2+value3"), there will be a
single parameter named "keywords" containing the "+"-delimited keywords.
The array of parameter names returned will be in the same order as they were submitted by the browser.
Usually this order is the same as the order in which the parameters are defined in the form (however,
this isn't part of the spec, and so isn't guaranteed).
Fetching the value or values of a single named parameter
my @values = $q->multi_param('foo');
-or-
my $value = $q->param('foo');
-or-
my @values = $q->param('foo'); # list context, discouraged and will raise
# a warning (use ->multi_param instead)
Pass the param() / multi_param() method a single argument to fetch the value of the named parameter. When
calling param() If the parameter is multivalued (e.g. from multiple selections in a scrolling list), you
can ask to receive an array. Otherwise the method will return the first value.
Warning - calling param() in list context can lead to vulnerabilities if you do not sanitise user input
as it is possible to inject other param keys and values into your code. This is why the multi_param()
method exists, to make it clear that a list is being returned, note that param() can still be called in
list context and will return a list for back compatibility.
The following code is an example of a vulnerability as the call to param will be evaluated in list
context and thus possibly inject extra keys and values into the hash:
my %user_info = (
id => 1,
name => $q->param('name'),
);
The fix for the above is to force scalar context on the call to ->param by prefixing it with "scalar"
name => scalar $q->param('name'),
If you call param() in list context with an argument a warning will be raised by CGI.pm, you can disable
this warning by setting $CGI::LIST_CONTEXT_WARN to 0 or by using the multi_param() method instead
If a value is not given in the query string, as in the queries "name1=&name2=", it will be returned as an
empty string.
If the parameter does not exist at all, then param() will return undef in scalar context, and the empty
list in a list context.
Setting the value(s) of a named parameter
$q->param('foo','an','array','of','values');
This sets the value for the named parameter 'foo' to an array of values. This is one way to change the
value of a field AFTER the script has been invoked once before.
param() also recognizes a named parameter style of calling described in more detail later:
$q->param(
-name => 'foo',
-values => ['an','array','of','values'],
);
-or-
$q->param(
-name => 'foo',
-value => 'the value',
);
Appending additional values to a named parameter
$q->append(
-name =>'foo',
-values =>['yet','more','values'],
);
This adds a value or list of values to the named parameter. The values are appended to the end of the
parameter if it already exists. Otherwise the parameter is created. Note that this method only recognizes
the named argument calling syntax.
Importing all parameters into a namespace
$q->import_names('R');
This creates a series of variables in the 'R' namespace. For example, $R::foo, @R:foo. For keyword lists,
a variable @R::keywords will appear. If no namespace is given, this method will assume 'Q'. WARNING:
don't import anything into 'main'; this is a major security risk!
NOTE 1: Variable names are transformed as necessary into legal perl variable names. All non-legal
characters are transformed into underscores. If you need to keep the original names, you should use the
param() method instead to access CGI variables by name.
In fact, you should probably not use this method at all given the above caveats and security risks.
Deleting a parameter completely
$q->delete('foo','bar','baz');
This completely clears a list of parameters. It sometimes useful for resetting parameters that you don't
want passed down between script invocations.
If you are using the function call interface, use "Delete()" instead to avoid conflicts with perl's
built-in delete operator.
Deleting all parameters
$q->delete_all();
This clears the CGI object completely. It might be useful to ensure that all the defaults are taken when
you create a fill-out form.
Use Delete_all() instead if you are using the function call interface.
Handling non-urlencoded arguments
If POSTed data is not of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data, then the POSTed
data will not be processed, but instead be returned as-is in a parameter named POSTDATA. To retrieve it,
use code like this:
my $data = $q->param('POSTDATA');
Likewise if PUTed and PATCHed data can be retrieved with code like this:
my $data = $q->param('PUTDATA');
my $data = $q->param('PATCHDATA');
(If you don't know what the preceding means, worry not. It only affects people trying to use CGI for XML
processing and other specialized tasks)
PUTDATA/POSTDATA/PATCHDATA are also available via upload_hook, and as file uploads via "-putdata_upload"
option.
Direct access to the parameter list
$q->param_fetch('address')->[1] = '1313 Mockingbird Lane';
unshift @{$q->param_fetch(-name=>'address')},'George Munster';
If you need access to the parameter list in a way that isn't covered by the methods given in the previous
sections, you can obtain a direct reference to it by calling the param_fetch() method with the name of
the parameter. This will return an array reference to the named parameter, which you then can manipulate
in any way you like.
You can also use a named argument style using the -name argument.
Fetching the parameter list as a hash
my $params = $q->Vars;
print $params->{'address'};
my @foo = split("\0",$params->{'foo'});
my %params = $q->Vars;
use CGI ':cgi-lib';
my $params = Vars();
Many people want to fetch the entire parameter list as a hash in which the keys are the names of the CGI
parameters, and the values are the parameters' values. The Vars() method does this. Called in a scalar
context, it returns the parameter list as a tied hash reference. Changing a key changes the value of the
parameter in the underlying CGI parameter list. Called in a list context, it returns the parameter list
as an ordinary hash. This allows you to read the contents of the parameter list, but not to change it.
When using this, the thing you must watch out for are multivalued CGI parameters. Because a hash cannot
distinguish between scalar and list context, multivalued parameters will be returned as a packed string,
separated by the "\0" (null) character. You must split this packed string in order to get at the
individual values. This is the convention introduced long ago by Steve Brenner in his cgi-lib.pl module
for perl version 4, and may be replaced in future versions with array references.
If you wish to use Vars() as a function, import the :cgi-lib set of function calls (also see the section
on CGI-LIB compatibility).
Saving the state of the script to a file
$q->save(\*FILEHANDLE)
This will write the current state of the form to the provided filehandle. You can read it back in by
providing a filehandle to the new() method. Note that the filehandle can be a file, a pipe, or whatever.
The format of the saved file is:
NAME1=VALUE1
NAME1=VALUE1'
NAME2=VALUE2
NAME3=VALUE3
=
Both name and value are URL escaped. Multi-valued CGI parameters are represented as repeated names. A
session record is delimited by a single = symbol. You can write out multiple records and read them back
in with several calls to new. You can do this across several sessions by opening the file in append
mode, allowing you to create primitive guest books, or to keep a history of users' queries. Here's a
short example of creating multiple session records:
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
open (my $out_fh,'>>','test.out') || die "Can't open test.out: $!";
my $records = 5;
for ( 0 .. $records ) {
my $q = CGI->new;
$q->param( -name => 'counter',-value => $_ );
$q->save( $out_fh );
}
close( $out_fh );
# reopen for reading
open (my $in_fh,'<','test.out') || die "Can't open test.out: $!";
while (!eof($in_fh)) {
my $q = CGI->new($in_fh);
print $q->param('counter'),"\n";
}
The file format used for save/restore is identical to that used by the Whitehead Genome Center's data
exchange format "Boulderio", and can be manipulated and even databased using Boulderio utilities. See
Boulder for further details.
If you wish to use this method from the function-oriented (non-OO) interface, the exported name for this
method is save_parameters().
Retrieving cgi errors
Errors can occur while processing user input, particularly when processing uploaded files. When these
errors occur, CGI will stop processing and return an empty parameter list. You can test for the existence
and nature of errors using the cgi_error() function. The error messages are formatted as HTTP status
codes. You can either incorporate the error text into a page, or use it as the value of the HTTP status:
if ( my $error = $q->cgi_error ) {
print $q->header( -status => $error );
print "Error: $error";
exit 0;
}
When using the function-oriented interface (see the next section), errors may only occur the first time
you call param(). Be ready for this!
Using the function-oriented interface
To use the function-oriented interface, you must specify which CGI.pm routines or sets of routines to
import into your script's namespace. There is a small overhead associated with this importation, but it
isn't much.
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI qw/ list of methods /;
The listed methods will be imported into the current package; you can call them directly without creating
a CGI object first. This example shows how to import the param() and header() methods, and then use them
directly:
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI qw/ param header /;
print header('text/plain');
my $zipcode = param('zipcode');
More frequently, you'll import common sets of functions by referring to the groups by name. All function
sets are preceded with a ":" character as in ":cgi" (for CGI protocol handling methods).
Here is a list of the function sets you can import:
:cgi
Import all CGI-handling methods, such as param(), path_info() and the like.
:all
Import all the available methods. For the full list, see the CGI.pm code, where the variable
%EXPORT_TAGS is defined. (N.B. the :cgi-lib imports will not be included in the :all import, you will
have to import :cgi-lib to get those)
Note that in the interests of execution speed CGI.pm does not use the standard Exporter syntax for
specifying load symbols. This may change in the future.
Pragmas
In addition to the function sets, there are a number of pragmas that you can import. Pragmas, which are
always preceded by a hyphen, change the way that CGI.pm functions in various ways. Pragmas, function
sets, and individual functions can all be imported in the same use() line. For example, the following use
statement imports the cgi set of functions and enables debugging mode (pragma -debug):
use strict;
use warninigs;
use CGI qw/ :cgi -debug /;
The current list of pragmas is as follows:
-no_undef_params
This keeps CGI.pm from including undef params in the parameter list.
-utf8
This makes CGI.pm treat all parameters as text strings rather than binary strings (see perlunitut for
the distinction), assuming UTF-8 for the encoding.
CGI.pm does the decoding from the UTF-8 encoded input data, restricting this decoding to input text
as distinct from binary upload data which are left untouched. Therefore, a ':utf8' layer must not be
used on STDIN.
If you do not use this option you can manually select which fields are expected to return utf-8
strings and convert them using code like this:
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
use Encode qw/ decode /;
my $cgi = CGI->new;
my $param = $cgi->param('foo');
$param = decode( 'UTF-8',$param );
-putdata_upload / -postdata_upload / -patchdata_upload
Makes "$cgi->param('PUTDATA');", "$cgi->param('PATCHDATA');", and "$cgi->param('POSTDATA');" act like
file uploads named PUTDATA, PATCHDATA, and POSTDATA. See "Handling non-urlencoded arguments" and
"Processing a file upload field" PUTDATA/POSTDATA/PATCHDATA are also available via upload_hook.
-nph
This makes CGI.pm produce a header appropriate for an NPH (no parsed header) script. You may need to
do other things as well to tell the server that the script is NPH. See the discussion of NPH scripts
below.
-newstyle_urls
Separate the name=value pairs in CGI parameter query strings with semicolons rather than ampersands.
For example:
?name=fred;age=24;favorite_color=3
Semicolon-delimited query strings are always accepted, and will be emitted by self_url() and
query_string(). newstyle_urls became the default in version 2.64.
-oldstyle_urls
Separate the name=value pairs in CGI parameter query strings with ampersands rather than semicolons.
This is no longer the default.
-no_debug
This turns off the command-line processing features. If you want to run a CGI.pm script from the
command line, and you don't want it to read CGI parameters from the command line or STDIN, then use
this pragma:
use CGI qw/ -no_debug :standard /;
-debug
This turns on full debugging. In addition to reading CGI arguments from the command-line processing,
CGI.pm will pause and try to read arguments from STDIN, producing the message "(offline mode: enter
name=value pairs on standard input)" features.
See the section on debugging for more details.
GENERATING DYNAMIC DOCUMENTS
Most of CGI.pm's functions deal with creating documents on the fly. Generally you will produce the HTTP
header first, followed by the document itself. CGI.pm provides functions for generating HTTP headers of
various types.
Each of these functions produces a fragment of HTTP which you can print out directly so that it is
processed by the browser, appended to a string, or saved to a file for later use.
Creating a standard http header
Normally the first thing you will do in any CGI script is print out an HTTP header. This tells the
browser what type of document to expect, and gives other optional information, such as the language,
expiration date, and whether to cache the document. The header can also be manipulated for special
purposes, such as server push and pay per view pages.
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
my $cgi = CGI->new;
print $cgi->header;
-or-
print $cgi->header('image/gif');
-or-
print $cgi->header('text/html','204 No response');
-or-
print $cgi->header(
-type => 'image/gif',
-nph => 1,
-status => '402 Payment required',
-expires => '+3d',
-cookie => $cookie,
-charset => 'utf-8',
-attachment => 'foo.gif',
-Cost => '$2.00'
);
header() returns the Content-type: header. You can provide your own MIME type if you choose, otherwise it
defaults to text/html. An optional second parameter specifies the status code and a human-readable
message. For example, you can specify 204, "No response" to create a script that tells the browser to do
nothing at all. Note that RFC 2616 expects the human-readable phase to be there as well as the numeric
status code.
The last example shows the named argument style for passing arguments to the CGI methods using named
parameters. Recognized parameters are -type, -status, -expires, and -cookie. Any other named parameters
will be stripped of their initial hyphens and turned into header fields, allowing you to specify any HTTP
header you desire. Internal underscores will be turned into hyphens:
print $cgi->header( -Content_length => 3002 );
Most browsers will not cache the output from CGI scripts. Every time the browser reloads the page, the
script is invoked anew. You can change this behavior with the -expires parameter. When you specify an
absolute or relative expiration interval with this parameter, some browsers and proxy servers will cache
the script's output until the indicated expiration date. The following forms are all valid for the
-expires field:
+30s 30 seconds from now
+10m ten minutes from now
+1h one hour from now
-1d yesterday (i.e. "ASAP!")
now immediately
+3M in three months
+10y in ten years time
Thursday, 25-Apr-2018 00:40:33 GMT at the indicated time & date
The -cookie parameter generates a header that tells the browser to provide a "magic cookie" during all
subsequent transactions with your script. Some cookies have a special format that includes interesting
attributes such as expiration time. Use the cookie() method to create and retrieve session cookies.
The -nph parameter, if set to a true value, will issue the correct headers to work with a NPH (no-parse-
header) script. This is important to use with certain servers that expect all their scripts to be NPH.
The -charset parameter can be used to control the character set sent to the browser. If not provided,
defaults to ISO-8859-1. As a side effect, this sets the charset() method as well. Note that the default
being ISO-8859-1 may not make sense for all content types, e.g.:
Content-Type: image/gif; charset=ISO-8859-1
In the above case you need to pass -charset => '' to prevent the default being used.
The -attachment parameter can be used to turn the page into an attachment. Instead of displaying the
page, some browsers will prompt the user to save it to disk. The value of the argument is the suggested
name for the saved file. In order for this to work, you may have to set the -type to
"application/octet-stream".
The -p3p parameter will add a P3P tag to the outgoing header. The parameter can be an arrayref or a
space-delimited string of P3P tags. For example:
print $cgi->header( -p3p => [ qw/ CAO DSP LAW CURa / ] );
print $cgi->header( -p3p => 'CAO DSP LAW CURa' );
In either case, the outgoing header will be formatted as:
P3P: policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" cp="CAO DSP LAW CURa"
CGI.pm will accept valid multi-line headers when each line is separated with a CRLF value ("\r\n" on most
platforms) followed by at least one space. For example:
print $cgi->header( -ingredients => "ham\r\n\seggs\r\n\sbacon" );
Invalid multi-line header input will trigger in an exception. When multi-line headers are received,
CGI.pm will always output them back as a single line, according to the folding rules of RFC 2616: the
newlines will be removed, while the white space remains.
Generating a redirection header
print $q->redirect( 'http://somewhere.else/in/movie/land' );
Sometimes you don't want to produce a document yourself, but simply redirect the browser elsewhere,
perhaps choosing a URL based on the time of day or the identity of the user.
The redirect() method redirects the browser to a different URL. If you use redirection like this, you
should not print out a header as well.
You are advised to use full URLs (absolute with respect to current URL or even including the http: or
ftp: part) in redirection requests as relative URLs are resolved by the user agent of the client so may
not do what you want or expect them to do.
You can also use named arguments:
print $q->redirect(
-uri => 'http://somewhere.else/in/movie/land',
-nph => 1,
-status => '301 Moved Permanently'
);
All names arguments recognized by header() are also recognized by redirect(). However, most HTTP
headers, including those generated by -cookie and -target, are ignored by the browser.
The -nph parameter, if set to a true value, will issue the correct headers to work with a NPH (no-parse-
header) script. This is important to use with certain servers, such as Microsoft IIS, which expect all
their scripts to be NPH.
The -status parameter will set the status of the redirect. HTTP defines several different possible
redirection status codes, and the default if not specified is 302, which means "moved temporarily." You
may change the status to another status code if you wish.
Note that the human-readable phrase is also expected to be present to conform with RFC 2616, section 6.1.
Creating a self-referencing url that preserves state information
my $myself = $q->self_url;
print qq(<a href="$myself">I'm talking to myself.</a>);
self_url() will return a URL, that, when selected, will re-invoke this script with all its state
information intact. This is most useful when you want to jump around within the document using internal
anchors but you don't want to disrupt the current contents of the form(s). Something like this will do
the trick:
my $myself = $q->self_url;
print "<a href=\"$myself#table1\">See table 1</a>";
print "<a href=\"$myself#table2\">See table 2</a>";
print "<a href=\"$myself#yourself\">See for yourself</a>";
If you want more control over what's returned, using the url() method instead.
You can also retrieve a query string representation of the current object state with query_string():
my $the_string = $q->query_string();
The behavior of calling query_string is currently undefined when the HTTP method is something other than
GET.
If you want to retrieved the query string as set in the webserver, namely the environment variable, you
can call env_query_string()
Obtaining the script's url
my $full_url = url();
my $full_url = url( -full =>1 ); # alternative syntax
my $relative_url = url( -relative => 1 );
my $absolute_url = url( -absolute =>1 );
my $url_with_path = url( -path_info => 1 );
my $url_path_qry = url( -path_info => 1, -query =>1 );
my $netloc = url( -base => 1 );
url() returns the script's URL in a variety of formats. Called without any arguments, it returns the full
form of the URL, including host name and port number
http://your.host.com/path/to/script.cgi
You can modify this format with the following named arguments:
-absolute
If true, produce an absolute URL, e.g.
/path/to/script.cgi
-relative
Produce a relative URL. This is useful if you want to re-invoke your script with different
parameters. For example:
script.cgi
-full
Produce the full URL, exactly as if called without any arguments. This overrides the -relative and
-absolute arguments.
-path (-path_info)
Append the additional path information to the URL. This can be combined with -full, -absolute or
-relative. -path_info is provided as a synonym.
-query (-query_string)
Append the query string to the URL. This can be combined with -full, -absolute or -relative.
-query_string is provided as a synonym.
-base
Generate just the protocol and net location, as in http://www.foo.com:8000
-rewrite
If Apache's mod_rewrite is turned on, then the script name and path info probably won't match the
request that the user sent. Set -rewrite => 1 (default) to return URLs that match what the user sent
(the original request URI). Set -rewrite => 0 to return URLs that match the URL after the mod_rewrite
rules have run.
Mixing post and url parameters
my $color = url_param('color');
It is possible for a script to receive CGI parameters in the URL as well as in the fill-out form by
creating a form that POSTs to a URL containing a query string (a "?" mark followed by arguments). The
param() method will always return the contents of the POSTed fill-out form, ignoring the URL's query
string. To retrieve URL parameters, call the url_param() method. Use it in the same way as param(). The
main difference is that it allows you to read the parameters, but not set them.
Under no circumstances will the contents of the URL query string interfere with similarly-named CGI
parameters in POSTed forms. If you try to mix a URL query string with a form submitted with the GET
method, the results will not be what you expect.
If running from the command line, "url_param" will not pick up any parameters given on the command line.
Processing a file upload field
Basics
When the form is processed, you can retrieve an IO::File compatible handle for a file upload field like
this:
use autodie;
# undef may be returned if it's not a valid file handle
if ( my $io_handle = $q->upload('field_name') ) {
open ( my $out_file,'>>','/usr/local/web/users/feedback' );
while ( my $bytesread = $io_handle->read($buffer,1024) ) {
print $out_file $buffer;
}
}
In a list context, upload() will return an array of filehandles. This makes it possible to process forms
that use the same name for multiple upload fields.
If you want the entered file name for the file, you can just call param():
my $filename = $q->param('field_name');
Different browsers will return slightly different things for the name. Some browsers return the filename
only. Others return the full path to the file, using the path conventions of the user's machine.
Regardless, the name returned is always the name of the file on the user's machine, and is unrelated to
the name of the temporary file that CGI.pm creates during upload spooling (see below).
When a file is uploaded the browser usually sends along some information along with it in the Content-
Type (MIME type) and Content-Disposition (filename) headers. To retrieve this information, call
uploadInfo(). It returns a reference to a hash containing all the document headers.
my $filehandle = $q->upload( 'uploaded_file' );
my $type = $q->uploadInfo( $filehandle )->{'Content-Type'};
if ( $type ne 'text/html' ) {
die "HTML FILES ONLY!";
}
Note that you must use ->upload or ->param to get the file-handle to pass into uploadInfo as internally
this is represented as a File::Temp object (which is what will be returned by ->upload or ->param). When
using ->Vars you will get the literal filename rather than the File::Temp object, which will not return
anything when passed to uploadInfo. So don't use ->Vars.
When uploading multiple files, call ->param() in list context to retrieve a list of filehandles that you
can use when calling ->uploadInfo.
my @filehandles = $q->param('uploaded_file');
for my $fh (@filehandles) {
my $info = $q->uploadInfo($fh);
...
}
If you are using a machine that recognizes "text" and "binary" data modes, be sure to understand when and
how to use them (see the Camel book). Otherwise you may find that binary files are corrupted during file
uploads.
Accessing the temp files directly
When processing an uploaded file, CGI.pm creates a temporary file on your hard disk and passes you a file
handle to that file. After you are finished with the file handle, CGI.pm unlinks (deletes) the temporary
file. If you need to you can access the temporary file directly. You can access the temp file for a file
upload by passing the file name to the tmpFileName() method:
my $filehandle = $q->upload( 'uploaded_file' );
my $tmpfilename = $q->tmpFileName( $filehandle );
As with ->uploadInfo, using the reference returned by ->upload or ->param is preferred, although unlike
->uploadInfo, plain filenames also work if possible for backwards compatibility.
The temporary file will be deleted automatically when your program exits unless you manually rename it or
set $CGI::UNLINK_TMP_FILES to 0. On some operating systems (such as Windows NT), you will need to close
the temporary file's filehandle before your program exits. Otherwise the attempt to delete the temporary
file will fail.
Changes in temporary file handling (v4.05+)
CGI.pm had its temporary file handling significantly refactored, this logic is now all deferred to
File::Temp (which is wrapped in a compatibility object, CGI::File::Temp - DO NOT USE THIS PACKAGE
DIRECTLY). As a consequence the PRIVATE_TEMPFILES variable has been removed along with deprecation of the
private_tempfiles routine and complete removal of the CGITempFile package. The
$CGITempFile::TMPDIRECTORY is no longer used to set the temp directory, refer to the perldoc for
File::Temp if you want to override the default settings in that package (the TMPDIR env variable is still
available on some platforms). For Windows platforms the temporary directory order remains as before: TEMP
> TMP > WINDIR ( > TMPDIR ) so if you have any of these in use in existing scripts they should still
work.
The Fh package still exists but does nothing, the CGI::File::Temp class is a subclass of both File::Temp
and the empty Fh package, so if you have any code that checks that the filehandle isa Fh this should
still work.
When you get the internal file handle you will receive a File::Temp object, this should be transparent as
File::Temp isa IO::Handle and isa IO::Seekable meaning it behaves as previously. If you are doing
anything out of the ordinary with regards to temp files you should test your code before deploying this
update and refer to the File::Temp documentation for more information.
Handling interrupted file uploads
There are occasionally problems involving parsing the uploaded file. This usually happens when the user
presses "Stop" before the upload is finished. In this case, CGI.pm will return undef for the name of the
uploaded file and set cgi_error() to the string "400 Bad request (malformed multipart POST)". This error
message is designed so that you can incorporate it into a status code to be sent to the browser. Example:
my $file = $q->upload( 'uploaded_file' );
if ( !$file && $q->cgi_error ) {
print $q->header( -status => $q->cgi_error );
exit 0;
}
Progress bars for file uploads and avoiding temp files
CGI.pm gives you low-level access to file upload management through a file upload hook. You can use this
feature to completely turn off the temp file storage of file uploads, or potentially write your own file
upload progress meter.
This is much like the UPLOAD_HOOK facility available in Apache::Request, with the exception that the
first argument to the callback is an Apache::Upload object, here it's the remote filename.
my $q = CGI->new( \&hook [,$data [,$use_tempfile]] );
sub hook {
my ( $filename, $buffer, $bytes_read, $data ) = @_;
print "Read $bytes_read bytes of $filename\n";
}
The $data field is optional; it lets you pass configuration information (e.g. a database handle) to your
hook callback.
The $use_tempfile field is a flag that lets you turn on and off CGI.pm's use of a temporary disk-based
file during file upload. If you set this to a FALSE value (default true) then
"$q->param('uploaded_file')" will still return a typeglob that can be used to access a filehandle and the
filename of the uploaded file, however the filehandle will be a handle to an empty file. Existence of
your hook causes CGI.pm to bypass writing to that filehandle (which is probably what you intended when
you set $use_tempfile off).
The uploadInfo() method can be used on the typeglob returned to you when you called
"$q->param('upload_file')" to return information about the uploaded file(s). For multiple file uploads,
use the param() method in list context to retrieve all of the typeglobs.
my (@filehandles) = $cgi->param('upfile');
foreach my $fh (@filehandles) {
my $info = $cgi->uploadInfo($fh);
...
}
If using the function-oriented interface, call the CGI::upload_hook() method before calling param() or
any other CGI functions:
CGI::upload_hook( \&hook [,$data [,$use_tempfile]] );
This method is not exported by default. You will have to import it explicitly if you wish to use it
without the CGI:: prefix.
Troubleshooting file uploads on Windows
If you are using CGI.pm on a Windows platform and find that binary files get slightly larger when
uploaded but that text files remain the same, then you have forgotten to activate binary mode on the
output filehandle. Be sure to call binmode() on any handle that you create to write the uploaded file to
disk.
Older ways to process file uploads
This section is here for completeness. if you are building a new application with CGI.pm, you can skip
it.
The original way to process file uploads with CGI.pm was to use param(). The value it returns has a dual
nature as both a file name and a lightweight filehandle. This dual nature is problematic if you following
the recommended practice of having "use strict" in your code. perl will complain when you try to use a
string as a filehandle. More seriously, it is possible for the remote user to type garbage into the
upload field, in which case what you get from param() is not a filehandle at all, but a string.
To solve this problem the upload() method was added, which always returns a lightweight filehandle. This
generally works well, but will have trouble interoperating with some other modules because the file
handle is not derived from IO::File. So that brings us to current recommendation given above, which is to
call the handle() method on the file handle returned by upload(). That upgrades the handle to an
IO::File. It's a big win for compatibility for a small penalty of loading IO::File the first time you
call it.
HTTP COOKIES
CGI.pm has several methods that support cookies.
A cookie is a name=value pair much like the named parameters in a CGI query string. CGI scripts create
one or more cookies and send them to the browser in the HTTP header. The browser maintains a list of
cookies that belong to a particular Web server, and returns them to the CGI script during subsequent
interactions.
In addition to the required name=value pair, each cookie has several optional attributes:
1. an expiration time
This is a time/date string (in a special GMT format) that indicates when a cookie expires. The cookie
will be saved and returned to your script until this expiration date is reached if the user exits the
browser and restarts it. If an expiration date isn't specified, the cookie will remain active until
the user quits the browser.
2. a domain
This is a partial or complete domain name for which the cookie is valid. The browser will return the
cookie to any host that matches the partial domain name. For example, if you specify a domain name
of ".capricorn.com", then the browser will return the cookie to Web servers running on any of the
machines "www.capricorn.com", "www2.capricorn.com", "feckless.capricorn.com", etc. Domain names must
contain at least two periods to prevent attempts to match on top level domains like ".edu". If no
domain is specified, then the browser will only return the cookie to servers on the host the cookie
originated from.
3. a path
If you provide a cookie path attribute, the browser will check it against your script's URL before
returning the cookie. For example, if you specify the path "/cgi-bin", then the cookie will be
returned to each of the scripts "/cgi-bin/tally.pl", "/cgi-bin/order.pl", and
"/cgi-bin/customer_service/complain.pl", but not to the script "/cgi-private/site_admin.pl". By
default, path is set to "/", which causes the cookie to be sent to any CGI script on your site.
4. a "secure" flag
If the "secure" attribute is set, the cookie will only be sent to your script if the CGI request is
occurring on a secure channel, such as SSL.
The interface to HTTP cookies is the cookie() method:
my $cookie = $q->cookie(
-name => 'sessionID',
-value => 'xyzzy',
-expires => '+1h',
-path => '/cgi-bin/database',
-domain => '.capricorn.org',
-secure => 1
);
print $q->header( -cookie => $cookie );
cookie() creates a new cookie. Its parameters include:
-name
The name of the cookie (required). This can be any string at all. Although browsers limit their
cookie names to non-whitespace alphanumeric characters, CGI.pm removes this restriction by escaping
and unescaping cookies behind the scenes.
-value
The value of the cookie. This can be any scalar value, array reference, or even hash reference. For
example, you can store an entire hash into a cookie this way:
my $cookie = $q->cookie(
-name => 'family information',
-value => \%childrens_ages
);
-path
The optional partial path for which this cookie will be valid, as described above.
-domain
The optional partial domain for which this cookie will be valid, as described above.
-expires
The optional expiration date for this cookie. The format is as described in the section on the
header() method:
"+1h" one hour from now
-secure
If set to true, this cookie will only be used within a secure SSL session.
The cookie created by cookie() must be incorporated into the HTTP header within the string returned by
the header() method:
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
my $q = CGI->new;
my $cookie = ...
print $q->header( -cookie => $cookie );
To create multiple cookies, give header() an array reference:
my $cookie1 = $q->cookie(
-name => 'riddle_name',
-value => "The Sphynx's Question"
);
my $cookie2 = $q->cookie(
-name => 'answers',
-value => \%answers
);
print $q->header( -cookie => [ $cookie1,$cookie2 ] );
To retrieve a cookie, request it by name by calling cookie() method without the -value parameter. This
example uses the object-oriented form:
my $riddle = $q->cookie('riddle_name');
my %answers = $q->cookie('answers');
Cookies created with a single scalar value, such as the "riddle_name" cookie, will be returned in that
form. Cookies with array and hash values can also be retrieved.
The cookie and CGI namespaces are separate. If you have a parameter named 'answers' and a cookie named
'answers', the values retrieved by param() and cookie() are independent of each other. However, it's
simple to turn a CGI parameter into a cookie, and vice-versa:
# turn a CGI parameter into a cookie
my $c = cookie( -name => 'answers',-value => [$q->param('answers')] );
# vice-versa
$q->param( -name => 'answers',-value => [ $q->cookie('answers')] );
If you call cookie() without any parameters, it will return a list of the names of all cookies passed to
your script:
my @cookies = $q->cookie();
See the cookie.cgi example script for some ideas on how to use cookies effectively.
$CGI::COOKIE_CACHE
If set to a non-negative integer, this variable will cause CGI.pm to use the cached cookie details
from the previous call to cookie(). By default this cache is off to retain backwards compatibility.
DEBUGGING
If you are running the script from the command line or in the perl debugger, you can pass the script a
list of keywords or parameter=value pairs on the command line or from standard input (you don't have to
worry about tricking your script into reading from environment variables). You can pass keywords like
this:
your_script.pl keyword1 keyword2 keyword3
or this:
your_script.pl keyword1+keyword2+keyword3
or this:
your_script.pl name1=value1 name2=value2
or this:
your_script.pl name1=value1&name2=value2
To turn off this feature, use the -no_debug pragma.
To test the POST method, you may enable full debugging with the -debug pragma. This will allow you to
feed newline-delimited name=value pairs to the script on standard input.
When debugging, you can use quotes and backslashes to escape characters in the familiar shell manner,
letting you place spaces and other funny characters in your parameter=value pairs:
your_script.pl "name1='I am a long value'" "name2=two\ words"
Finally, you can set the path info for the script by prefixing the first name/value parameter with the
path followed by a question mark (?):
your_script.pl /your/path/here?name1=value1&name2=value2
FETCHING ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Some of the more useful environment variables can be fetched through this interface. The methods are as
follows:
Accept()
Return a list of MIME types that the remote browser accepts. If you give this method a single
argument corresponding to a MIME type, as in Accept('text/html'), it will return a floating point
value corresponding to the browser's preference for this type from 0.0 (don't want) to 1.0. Glob
types (e.g. text/*) in the browser's accept list are handled correctly.
Note that the capitalization changed between version 2.43 and 2.44 in order to avoid conflict with
perl's accept() function.
raw_cookie()
Returns the HTTP_COOKIE variable. Cookies have a special format, and this method call just returns
the raw form (?cookie dough). See cookie() for ways of setting and retrieving cooked cookies.
Called with no parameters, raw_cookie() returns the packed cookie structure. You can separate it
into individual cookies by splitting on the character sequence "; ". Called with the name of a
cookie, retrieves the unescaped form of the cookie. You can use the regular cookie() method to get
the names, or use the raw_fetch() method from the CGI::Cookie module.
env_query_string()
Returns the QUERY_STRING variable, note that this is the original value as set in the environment by
the webserver and (possibly) not the same value as returned by query_string(), which represents the
object state
user_agent()
Returns the HTTP_USER_AGENT variable. If you give this method a single argument, it will attempt to
pattern match on it, allowing you to do something like user_agent(Mozilla);
path_info()
Returns additional path information from the script URL. E.G. fetching
/cgi-bin/your_script/additional/stuff will result in path_info() returning "/additional/stuff".
NOTE: The Microsoft Internet Information Server is broken with respect to additional path
information. If you use the perl DLL library, the IIS server will attempt to execute the additional
path information as a perl script. If you use the ordinary file associations mapping, the path
information will be present in the environment, but incorrect. The best thing to do is to avoid using
additional path information in CGI scripts destined for use with IIS. A best attempt has been made to
make CGI.pm do the right thing.
path_translated()
As per path_info() but returns the additional path information translated into a physical path, e.g.
"/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/additional/stuff".
The Microsoft IIS is broken with respect to the translated path as well.
remote_host()
Returns either the remote host name or IP address if the former is unavailable.
remote_ident()
Returns the name of the remote user (as returned by identd) or undef if not set
remote_addr()
Returns the remote host IP address, or 127.0.0.1 if the address is unavailable.
request_uri()
Returns the interpreted pathname of the requested document or CGI (relative to the document root). Or
undef if not set.
script_name()
Return the script name as a partial URL, for self-referring scripts.
referer()
Return the URL of the page the browser was viewing prior to fetching your script.
auth_type()
Return the authorization/verification method in use for this script, if any.
server_name()
Returns the name of the server, usually the machine's host name.
virtual_host()
When using virtual hosts, returns the name of the host that the browser attempted to contact
server_port()
Return the port that the server is listening on.
server_protocol()
Returns the protocol and revision of the incoming request, or defaults to HTTP/1.0 if this is not set
virtual_port()
Like server_port() except that it takes virtual hosts into account. Use this when running with
virtual hosts.
server_software()
Returns the server software and version number.
remote_user()
Return the authorization/verification name used for user verification, if this script is protected.
user_name()
Attempt to obtain the remote user's name, using a variety of different techniques. May not work in
all browsers.
request_method()
Returns the method used to access your script, usually one of 'POST', 'GET' or 'HEAD'. If running
from the command line it will be undef.
content_type()
Returns the content_type of data submitted in a POST, generally multipart/form-data or
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
http()
Called with no arguments returns the list of HTTP environment variables, including such things as
HTTP_USER_AGENT, HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE, and HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET, corresponding to the like-named HTTP
header fields in the request. Called with the name of an HTTP header field, returns its value.
Capitalization and the use of hyphens versus underscores are not significant.
For example, all three of these examples are equivalent:
my $requested_language = $q->http('Accept-language');
my $requested_language = $q->http('Accept_language');
my $requested_language = $q->http('HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE');
https()
The same as http(), but operates on the HTTPS environment variables present when the SSL protocol is
in effect. Can be used to determine whether SSL is turned on.
USING NPH SCRIPTS
NPH, or "no-parsed-header", scripts bypass the server completely by sending the complete HTTP header
directly to the browser. This has slight performance benefits, but is of most use for taking advantage of
HTTP extensions that are not directly supported by your server, such as server push and PICS headers.
Servers use a variety of conventions for designating CGI scripts as NPH. Many Unix servers look at the
beginning of the script's name for the prefix "nph-". The Macintosh WebSTAR server and Microsoft's
Internet Information Server, in contrast, try to decide whether a program is an NPH script by examining
the first line of script output.
CGI.pm supports NPH scripts with a special NPH mode. When in this mode, CGI.pm will output the necessary
extra header information when the header() and redirect() methods are called.
The Microsoft Internet Information Server requires NPH mode. As of version 2.30, CGI.pm will
automatically detect when the script is running under IIS and put itself into this mode. You do not need
to do this manually, although it won't hurt anything if you do.
In the use statement
Simply add the "-nph" pragma to the list of symbols to be imported into your script:
use CGI qw(:standard -nph)
By calling the nph() method:
Call nph() with a non-zero parameter at any point after using CGI.pm in your program.
CGI->nph(1)
By using -nph parameters
in the header() and redirect() statements:
print header(-nph=>1);
SERVER PUSH
CGI.pm provides four simple functions for producing multipart documents of the type needed to implement
server push. These functions were graciously provided by Ed Jordan <ed@fidalgo.net>. To import these into
your namespace, you must import the ":push" set. You are also advised to put the script into NPH mode and
to set $| to 1 to avoid buffering problems.
Here is a simple script that demonstrates server push:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI qw/:push -nph/;
$| = 1;
print multipart_init( -boundary=>'----here we go!' );
for (0 .. 4) {
print multipart_start( -type=>'text/plain' ),
"The current time is ",scalar( localtime ),"\n";
if ($_ < 4) {
print multipart_end();
} else {
print multipart_final();
}
sleep 1;
}
This script initializes server push by calling multipart_init(). It then enters a loop in which it begins
a new multipart section by calling multipart_start(), prints the current local time, and ends a multipart
section with multipart_end(). It then sleeps a second, and begins again. On the final iteration, it ends
the multipart section with multipart_final() rather than with multipart_end().
multipart_init()
multipart_init( -boundary => $boundary, -charset => $charset );
Initialize the multipart system. The -boundary argument specifies what MIME boundary string to use to
separate parts of the document. If not provided, CGI.pm chooses a reasonable boundary for you.
The -charset provides the character set, if not provided this will default to ISO-8859-1
multipart_start()
multipart_start( -type => $type, -charset => $charset );
Start a new part of the multipart document using the specified MIME type and charset. If not
specified, text/html ISO-8859-1 is assumed.
multipart_end()
multipart_end()
End a part. You must remember to call multipart_end() once for each multipart_start(), except at the
end of the last part of the multipart document when multipart_final() should be called instead of
multipart_end().
multipart_final()
multipart_final()
End all parts. You should call multipart_final() rather than multipart_end() at the end of the last
part of the multipart document.
Users interested in server push applications should also have a look at the CGI::Push module.
AVOIDING DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACKS
A potential problem with CGI.pm is that, by default, it attempts to process form POSTings no matter how
large they are. A wily hacker could attack your site by sending a CGI script a huge POST of many
gigabytes. CGI.pm will attempt to read the entire POST into a variable, growing hugely in size until it
runs out of memory. While the script attempts to allocate the memory the system may slow down
dramatically. This is a form of denial of service attack.
Another possible attack is for the remote user to force CGI.pm to accept a huge file upload. CGI.pm will
accept the upload and store it in a temporary directory even if your script doesn't expect to receive an
uploaded file. CGI.pm will delete the file automatically when it terminates, but in the meantime the
remote user may have filled up the server's disk space, causing problems for other programs.
The best way to avoid denial of service attacks is to limit the amount of memory, CPU time and disk space
that CGI scripts can use. Some Web servers come with built-in facilities to accomplish this. In other
cases, you can use the shell limit or ulimit commands to put ceilings on CGI resource usage.
CGI.pm also has some simple built-in protections against denial of service attacks, but you must activate
them before you can use them. These take the form of two global variables in the CGI name space:
$CGI::POST_MAX
If set to a non-negative integer, this variable puts a ceiling on the size of POSTings, in bytes. If
CGI.pm detects a POST that is greater than the ceiling, it will immediately exit with an error
message. This value will affect both ordinary POSTs and multipart POSTs, meaning that it limits the
maximum size of file uploads as well. You should set this to a reasonably high value, such as 10
megabytes.
$CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS
If set to a non-zero value, this will disable file uploads completely. Other fill-out form values
will work as usual.
To use these variables, set the variable at the top of the script, right after the "use" statement:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
$CGI::POST_MAX = 1024 * 1024 * 10; # max 10MB posts
$CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS = 1; # no uploads
An attempt to send a POST larger than $POST_MAX bytes will cause param() to return an empty CGI parameter
list. You can test for this event by checking cgi_error(), either after you create the CGI object or, if
you are using the function-oriented interface, call <param()> for the first time. If the POST was
intercepted, then cgi_error() will return the message "413 POST too large".
This error message is actually defined by the HTTP protocol, and is designed to be returned to the
browser as the CGI script's status code. For example:
my $uploaded_file = $q->param('upload');
if ( !$uploaded_file && $q->cgi_error() ) {
print $q->header( -status => $q->cgi_error() );
exit 0;
}
However it isn't clear that any browser currently knows what to do with this status code. It might be
better just to create a page that warns the user of the problem.
MODULE FLAGS
There are a number of global module flags which affect how CGI.pm operates.
$CGI::APPEND_QUERY_STRING
If set to a non-zero value, this will add query string parameters to a POST forms parameters hence
allowing param() to return values from the query string as well as from the decoded POST request
instead of having to use url_param instead. This makes it easier to get the value of a parameter when
you don't know the source.
COMPATIBILITY WITH CGI-LIB.PL
To make it easier to port existing programs that use cgi-lib.pl the compatibility routine "ReadParse" is
provided. Porting is simple:
OLD VERSION
require "cgi-lib.pl";
&ReadParse;
print "The value of the antique is $in{antique}.\n";
NEW VERSION
use CGI;
CGI::ReadParse();
print "The value of the antique is $in{antique}.\n";
CGI.pm's ReadParse() routine creates a tied variable named %in, which can be accessed to obtain the query
variables. Like ReadParse, you can also provide your own variable. Infrequently used features of
ReadParse, such as the creation of @in and $in variables, are not supported.
Once you use ReadParse, you can retrieve the query object itself this way:
my $q = $in{CGI};
This allows you to start using the more interesting features of CGI.pm without rewriting your old scripts
from scratch.
An even simpler way to mix cgi-lib calls with CGI.pm calls is to import both the ":cgi-lib" and
":standard" method:
use CGI qw(:cgi-lib :standard);
&ReadParse;
print "The price of your purchase is $in{price}.\n";
print textfield(-name=>'price', -default=>'$1.99');
Cgi-lib functions that are available in CGI.pm
In compatibility mode, the following cgi-lib.pl functions are available for your use:
ReadParse()
PrintHeader()
SplitParam()
MethGet()
MethPost()
LICENSE
The CGI.pm distribution is copyright 1995-2007, Lincoln D. Stein. It is distributed under the Artistic
License 2.0. It is currently maintained by Lee Johnson (LEEJO) with help from many contributors.
CREDITS
Thanks very much to:
Mark Stosberg (mark@stosberg.com)
Matt Heffron (heffron@falstaff.css.beckman.com)
James Taylor (james.taylor@srs.gov)
Scott Anguish (sanguish@digifix.com)
Mike Jewell (mlj3u@virginia.edu)
Timothy Shimmin (tes@kbs.citri.edu.au)
Joergen Haegg (jh@axis.se)
Laurent Delfosse (delfosse@delfosse.com)
Richard Resnick (applepi1@aol.com)
Craig Bishop (csb@barwonwater.vic.gov.au)
Tony Curtis (tc@vcpc.univie.ac.at)
Tim Bunce (Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk)
Tom Christiansen (tchrist@convex.com)
Andreas Koenig (k@franz.ww.TU-Berlin.DE)
Tim MacKenzie (Tim.MacKenzie@fulcrum.com.au)
Kevin B. Hendricks (kbhend@dogwood.tyler.wm.edu)
Stephen Dahmen (joyfire@inxpress.net)
Ed Jordan (ed@fidalgo.net)
David Alan Pisoni (david@cnation.com)
Doug MacEachern (dougm@opengroup.org)
Robin Houston (robin@oneworld.org)
...and many many more...
for suggestions and bug fixes.
BUGS
Address bug reports and comments to: <https://github.com/leejo/CGI.pm/issues>
See the <https://github.com/leejo/CGI.pm/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md> file for information on raising
issues and contributing
The original bug tracker can be found at: <https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Queue=CGI.pm>
SEE ALSO
CGI::Carp - provides Carp implementation tailored to the CGI environment.
CGI::Fast - supports running CGI applications under FastCGI
perl v5.38.2 2024-03-17 CGI(3pm)