I have an html form which sends a hidden field and a radio button with the same name.
This allows people to submit the form without picking from the list (but records a zero answer).
When the user does select a radio button, the form posts BOTH the hidden value and the selected value.
I'd like to write a perl function to convert the POST data to a hash. The following works for standard text boxes etc.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI qw(:standard);
sub GetForm{
%form;
foreach my $p (param()) {
$form{$p} = param($p);
}
return %form;
}
However when faced with two form inputs with the same name it just returns the first one (ie the hidden one)
I can see that the inputs are included in the POST header as an array but I don't know how to process them.
I'm working with legacy code so I can't change the form unfortunately!
Is there a way to do this?
I have an html form which sends a hidden field and a radio button with
the same name.
This allows people to submit the form without picking from the list
(but records a zero answer).
That's an odd approach. It would be easier to leave the hidden input out and treat the absence of the data as a zero answer.
However, if you want to stick to your approach, read the documentation for the CGI module.
Specifically, the documentation for param:
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.
Thus:
$form{$p} = [ param($p) ];
However, you do seem to be reinventing the wheel. There is a built-in method to get a hash of all paramaters:
$form = $CGI->new->Vars
That said, the documentation also says:
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.
So you should migrate away from this anyway.
Replace
$form{$p} = param($p); # Value of first field named $p
with
$form{$p} = ( multi_param($p) )[-1]; # Value of last field named $p
or
$form{$p} = ( grep length, multi_param($p) )[-1]; # Value of last field named $p
# that has a non-blank value
Related
In FileMaker Pro, when using number field, the user can choose to use a thousand separator or not. For example, if I have a database with a field for the price of an item, the user can either enter 1,000 or 1000.
I am using my database to generate an XML file that needs to be uploaded. The thing is, that my XML scheme dictates that only a value of 1000 is allowed and not 1,000. Therefore, I want to either automatically remove the comma, or (my preference in this case) alert the user when trying to enter a value with a thousand separator.
What I tried is the following.
For the field, I am setting Validation options. For example:
Require Strict data type: Numeric Only
Validated by calculation: Position ( Self ; ","; 1 ; 1 ) = 0
Validated by calculation: Self = Substitue ( Self, ",", "")
Auto-enter calculation: Filter( Self ; "0123456789." )
Unfortunately, none of these work. As the field is defined as a number (and I want to keep it like this, as I am also performing calculations based on this number), the Position function and the Substitute function apparently ignore the thousand separator!
EDIT:
Note that I am generating my XML by concatenating a string, for example:
"<Products><Product><Name>" & Name & "</Name><Price>" & Price & "</Price></Product></Product>"
The reason is that what I am exporting is dependent on the values in my database. Therefore, I am not using the [File][Export records...] function.
Auto-enter calculation will work, but you need to uncheck the box "Do not replace existing value of field" (which is checked by default).
I'd suggest using the calculation GetAsNumber(self) as the auto-enter calc. If it should only contain integers, wrap that in a call to Int()
I am using my database to generate an XML file that needs to be uploaded. The thing is, that my XML scheme dictates that only a value of 1000 is allowed and not 1,000.
If this is only a problem when you export, why not handle it when exporting?
If you are exporting as XML using XSLT, you can add an instruction to
your stylesheet to remove the comma from all number fields;
Alternatively, you can export from a layout where the field is
formatted to display without the comma and select the Apply current's layout data formatting to exported data option when
exporting.
Added:
Perhaps I should have clarified. I am not using the export function to generate the XML as there is some logic involved in how the XML should be formatted (dependent on the data that I want to export). What I do instead is that I make a string where I combine XML-tags and actual values from the database.
IMHO, you're making a mistake by not taking advantage of the built-in XML/XSLT export option. Any imaginable logic can be implemented this way, without burdening your solution with the fragile task of creating a valid XML.
In any case, if you're using the field in a calculation, you can replace all references to it with:
GetAsNumber (YourField )
to get an unformatted, numeric-only, value.
Your question puzzles me. As far as I know, FileMaker does not store the thousands separator, but rather offers it only as a display option.
That's also why those functions can't find it.
Are you sure you are exporting the raw data and not a "formatted as layout" variant?
I need to make some changes to an SAPScript. I have the program and form name
Program: RBOSORDER01
Form: RBOSORDER02
I am looking to change some of the data shown in the form. I have debugged the program and I get see the call to write to the form, for example:
CALL FUNCTION 'WRITE_FORM'
EXPORTING
ELEMENT = 'ITEM_TEXT'
EXCEPTIONS
ELEMENT = 1
WINDOW = 2.
But how is the data passed between the program and the form. I cannot link between each. I was expecting to see a structure or a data element passed with 'ITEM_TEXT' and then this data is printed at this element "ITEM_TEXT" in the form but the link is not clear to me.
I have looked at the form also in SE71 and cannot see where you define this. Where is the link here, what am I missing?
This is in the form, so SE71 is what you need. You have to find the window first, where this element (ITEM_TEXT) is displayed, than look for the element and see what is displayed inside. The SAPSript form uses the global variables (structures, internal tables) of the print program directly by default (there are some other options as well, INCLUDE texts for example). So for example if a global variable gv_text is declared in the print program, and it is displayed in the SAPScript, than it will look like &GV_TEXT& in the form.
You can also debug the SAPScript if you switch on debugging in SE71 (can be painful, if the form is big).
Function 'WRITE_FORM' just calls the EntryPoint of the Form (SE71 / RBOSORDER02) in this case with ELEMENT='ITEM_TEXT'.
So you will end up in MAIN-Window at:
/E ITEM_TEXT
/: INCLUDE &VBDPA-TDNAME& OBJECT VBBP ID 0001 PARAGRAPH IT
In this case you have to debug what "VBDPA-TDNAME" is at this time and then you will find its value with transaction "SO10" (Standard-Text)
The INCLUDE can be a complex text and can have its own format strings.
As Jozsef said before, VBDPA-TDNAME is defined global in the print programm. (SE38n / RBOSORDER01)
I'm currently working on a little harvester, using this dataset of 2700 foundations. All the data are free to use with no limitations or copyright isues.
What I have so far: The harvesting task should be no problem if I take WWW::Mechanize — particularly for doing the form based search and selecting the individual entries. Hmm — I guess that the algorithm would be basically two nested loops: the outer loop runs the form-based search, the inner loop processes the search results.
The outer loop would use the select() and the submit_form() functions on the second search form on the page. Can we use DOM processing here? Well — how can we get the get the selection values.
The inner loop through the results would use the follow link function to get to the actual entries using the following call.
$mech->follow_link(url_regex => qr/webgrab_path=http:\/\/evs2000.*\?
Id=\d+$/, n => $result_nbr);
This would forward our mechanic browser to the entry page. Basically the URL query looks for links that have the webgrap_path to Id pattern, which is unique for each database entry. The $result_nbr variable tells mecha which one of the results it should follow next.
If we have several result pages we would also use the same trick to traverse through the result pages. For the semantic extraction of the entry information,we could parse the content of the actual entries with XML:LibXML's html parser (which works fine on this page), because it gives you some powerful DOM selection (using XPath) methods.
Well the actual looping through the pages should be doable in a few lines of Perl (max. 20 lines — likely less).
But wait: the processing of the entry pages will then be the most complex part
of the script.
Approaches: In principle we could do the same algorithm with a single while loop
if we use the back() function smartly.
Can you give me a hint for the beginning — the processing of the entry pages — doing this in Perl:: Mechanize?
Here's what I have:
GetThePage(
starting url
);
sub GetThePage {
my $mech ...
my #pages = ...
while(#pages) {
my $page = shift #pages;
$mech->get( $page );
push #pages, GetMorePages( $mech );
SomethingImportant( $mech );
SomethingXPATH( $mech );
}
}
The question is how to find the DOM-paths.
Use Firebug, Opera Dragonfly, Chromium Developer tools.
Call the context menu on the indicated element to copy an XPath expression or CSS selector (useful for Web::Query) to clipboard.
Really you want to use Web::Scraper for this kind of thing.
I would like to write a script that lets me use this website
http://proteinmodel.org/AS2TS/LGA/lga.html
(I need to use it a few hundred times, and I don't feel like doing that manually)
I have searched the internet for ways how this could be done using Perl, and I came across WWW::Mechanize, which seemed to be just what I was looking for. But now I have discovered that the form on that website which I want to use has no name - its declaration line simply reads
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="./lga-form.cgi" ENCTYPE=multipart/form-data>
At first I tried simply not setting my WWW::Mechanize object's form_name property, which gave me this error message when I provided a value for the form's email address field:
Argument "my_email#address.com" isn't numeric in numeric gt (>) at /usr/share/perl5/WWW/Mechanize.pm line 1618.
I then tried setting form_name to '' and later ' ', but it was to no avail, I simply got this message:
There is no form named " " at ./automate_LGA.pl line 40
What way is there to deal with forms that have no names? It would be most helpful if someone on here could answer this question - even if the answer points away from using WWW::Mechanize, as I just want to get the job done, (more or less) no matter how.
Thanks a lot in advance!
An easy and more robust way is to use the $mech->form_with_fields() method from WWW::Mechanize to select the form you want based on the fields it contains.
Easier still, use the submit_form method with the with_fields option.
For instance, to locate a form which has fields named 'username' and 'password', complete them and submit the form, it's as easy as:
$mech->submit_form(
with_fields => { username => $username, password => $password }
);
Doing it this way has the advantage that if they shuffle their HTML around, changing the order of the forms in the HTML, or adding a new form before the one you're interested in, your code will continue to work.
I don't know about WWW::Mechanize, but its Python equivalent, mechanize, gives you an array of forms that you can iterate even if you don't know their names.
Example (taken from its homepage):
import mechanize
br = mechanize.Browser()
br.open("http://www.example.com/")
for form in br.forms():
print form
EDIT: searching in the docs of WWW::Mechanize I found the $mech->forms() method, that could be what you need. But since I don't know perl or WWW::Mechanize, I'll leave there my python answer.
Okay, I have found the answer. I can address the nameless form by its number (there's just one form on the webpage, so I guessed it would be number 1, and it worked). Here's part of my code:
my $lga = WWW::Mechanize->new();
my $address = 'my_email#address.com';
my $options = '-3 -o0 -d:4.0';
my $pdb_2 = "${pdb_id}_1 ${pdb_id}_2";
$lga->get('http://proteinmodel.org/AS2TS/LGA/lga.html');
$lga->success or die "LGA GET fail\n";
$lga->form_number(1);
$lga->field('Address', $address);
$lga->field('Options', $options);
$lga->field('PDB_2', $pdb_2);
$lga->submit();
$lga->success or die "LGA POST fail\n";
How do I submit a form that can do two different things based on the URI?
For example, if the URI contains a string "new" the form will submit differently than it would if "new" were not in the URI.
I'm having trouble implementing this, as when a form is submitted, it takes the URI of whatever "form_open" says.
Altering the form_open path is probably not the way to do this. How are you using this? Does the person filling out the form affect the "new" string?
What I would do is put a hidden input on the form and set THAT value to "new". Then in the controller, use a GET to take the value of the input form, and do a simple IF / ELSE statement based off the value of that variable.
This way, you could setup several different ways to use the same form - hidden=new, hidden=old, hidden=brandnew, hiddend=reallyold could all process the form values differently, even sending them to different tables in your DB or whatever.
Kevin - I thought I'd done something like this before and I had - here's a quick look:
In routes.php:
$route['some/pathname/(:any)'] = "my_controller/my_function/$1";
Then in mycontroller.php:
function my_function($type)
{
if ($type == "new") {
do this }
elseif ($type == "update)" {
do this }
}