How to : Access get / post request data using perl

Access get / post request data using perl

This article describes how to access data from an HTTP GET / POST Web request using Perl.

While there are many Perl modules available (including the CPAN) which

already contain such functionality, the following code demonstrates

how to pull data from both an HTTP GET and HTTP POST request without

any external dependencies.

sub populateQueryFields {

%queryString = ();

my $tmpStr = $ENV{ "QUERY_STRING" };

@parts = split( /\&/, $tmpStr );

foreach $part (@parts) {

( $name, $value ) = split( /\=/, $part );

$queryString{ "$name" } = $value;

}

}

sub populatePostFields {

%postFields = ();

read( STDIN, $tmpStr, $ENV{ "CONTENT_LENGTH" } );

@parts = split( /\&/, $tmpStr );

foreach $part (@parts) {

( $name, $value ) = split( /\=/, $part );

$value =" ( s/%23/\#/g );

$value =" ( s/%2F/\//g );

$postFields{ "$name" } = $value;

}

}

populateQueryFields pulls all name/value pairs from a URL (GET

request) into a hash called %queryString. populatePostFields

pulls all data from a POST request (via STDIN) into a hash called

%postFields. Examples:

Given the following URL,

http://www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/script.pl?fname=Jason&lname=Plackey

&populateQueryFields;

$firstName = $queryString{ "fname" };

$lastName = $queryString{ "lname" };

Would pull "Jason" and "Plackey" into $firstName and $lastName,

respectively.

Similarly, given an HTML form- ﹥ POST request,

...







...



&populatePostFields;

$firstName = $postFields{ "fname" };

$lastName = $postFields{ "lname" };

Would, once again, pull the respective data entered via the HTML

form into the $firstName and $lastName fields.

One additional note: In the populatePostFields routine, there are

two calls to s///. These are optional, and mimic (lightly) the

functionality of an unEscape() or urlDecode() type of procedure. The

specific two calls made in the routine above replace "%23" with a

pound (#) sign, and "%2F" with a forward slash (/). These can be

altered as you see fit.

Enjoy,

Jason Plackey

Vice President of Business Development

Raven2K Integrated Solutions

http://www.raven2k.com

[email protected]