Re: [MacPerl-WebCGI] Okey..what next?

[David Steffen <steffen@biomedcomp.com>]

Alvy:

In reply to:

>Am i close or should i melt this ibook into plastic bowling ball?

1) :-)
2) Definitely getting closer.
3) But if you give up, don't melt the Mac, mail it to me, I love them!

>Thank you

My pleasure.

>All your suggestions make sense to me

That's good, as my experience is that is how things get solved, not 
by rote patching but by understanding.

>Now i have a perculilar thing happening. when i access the script though the
>submit button the results is
>"The file you requested was not availible or does not exist."
>Yet the little window i mentioned earlier opens in the background
>"...machttp search appleEvents...."

OK.  I think you have found not one but two more differences between 
Unix CGI scripting and Mac CGI scripting here, so continuing...

>I made a mistake and deleted a ' in one of the lines and when i accessed the
>script though the submit button, i got a different error than not found...it
>said "bad name after www::. File ':vars.pl; line 12"
>ANd when i put the ' back in.. it goes back to file not found.

I think what you are getting is not an error message from the Web 
server, but an error message from MacPerl!  So, the two differences:

1) Under Unix, an error (standard error) found by perl is sent to a 
log file on the Web host computer; error_log by default if you are 
using Apache, for example.

    Using the MacPerl CGI Script glue, standard error (Errors from 
MacPerl) get sent back as content so they appear on your web page. 
Personally, I prefer the MacPerl behavior, but this difference can be 
confusing.

2) Different operating systems use different characters to separate 
directories (called folders on a Mac) the lie in the path to your 
file.  In your file vars.txt (vars.pl) you have:

$index_db = '/cgi-bin/data/index.txt';

I think that should be:

$index_db = ':data:index.txt';

...assuming your CGI script is in cgi-bin

See macperl.pod, which can be read with shuck, both of which come in 
your MacPerl distribution.

>I double check the html file to make sure the form was pointing to
>mtsearch.cgi and it is correct.

This fits with the above.  You are hitting the CGI and that is all fine.

>I tried to access the mtsearch.cgi directly from the browser, and it does
>something wierd and puts a copy of the cgi script on the the desktop along
>with a mtsearch.cgi.hqx file. ???

This never works.  You always need a Web server to use a CGI.

>Again thanks, and i do appreciate the help...Do you drink coffee?

You bet!

>My shop
>http://www.goldhillespresso.com
>I can hook you up.

:-)  I'll drop by the next time I'm in North Carolina.  Is this 
anywhere near Research Triangle Park?

-David-
David Steffen, Ph.D.
President, Biomedical Computing, Inc. <http://www.biomedcomp.com/>
Phone: (713) 610-9770 FAX: (713) 610-9769 E-mail: steffen@biomedcomp.com

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