Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Interests > Tilted Technology


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 01-29-2005, 07:58 PM   #1 (permalink)
Psycho
 
Location: Boston, MAss., USA
[Perl] CGI not rendering in Mozilla

Here's the deal;

I'm writing a website, and it has a CGI page that's rendered from a PERL script. Nothing fancy, a user clicks a few buttons on a form, hits submit, and the script reads the submission & provides responses based on the answers provided.

The problem is: I wanted to double check the page against a variety of browsers, and when I ran it against a copy of Mozilla 1.6, instead of rendering the output as HTML, it asked what to do with the file (save it, etc..). There's no pre-set MIME type for files with .cgi extention, which is my first guess as to what's happening, but I wanted to double check that there's not some problem with Mozilla rendering CGI output as HTML, or that I need something special in the PERL script to "convince" the Mozilla borswers that what they're getting is html. Anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.
__________________
I'm gonna be rich and famous, as soon I invent a device that lets you stab people in the face over the internet.
JohnnyRoyale is offline  
Old 01-30-2005, 10:59 AM   #2 (permalink)
Tilted
 
Location: Boston
Your problems are several.

The first thing that a CGI script should send to the browser is a content type, followed by two newlines, eg: "Content-Type: text/html\n\n".

When none is specified, IE defaults to 'text/html', whilst Mozilla defaults to 'text/plain'.

Secondly, Mozilla is dead and buried, you should really be testing with Firefox. As an extra bonus, there's a heap of extremely useful web development tools for it.

Thirdly, CGI has been dead and buried for several decades. For Perl web development you'll want to look at mod_perl, and while you are at it, look at a templating engine, or two. I'll leave it to others to recommend various HTML-embedded scripting languages, as I personally dislike them immensly.

Lastly, it's 'Perl', not 'PERL' - stupid, I know, but it's the first thing you'll be told (in liue of a helpful answer) at any Perl related forum.
franzelneekburm is offline  
Old 01-30-2005, 09:45 PM   #3 (permalink)
Insane
 
trache's Avatar
 
Forgive the threadjack, but I'd like to ask...

franz:

If CGI is dead, and you dislike HTML-embedded languages, what would you use.. and why?
__________________
"You looked at me as if I was eating runny eggs in slow motion." - Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip
trache is offline  
Old 01-31-2005, 12:42 AM   #4 (permalink)
In Your Dreams
 
Latch's Avatar
 
Location: City of Lights
I want to threadjack too..

How can CGI have been dead for several decades? The Web's only been around for one-one and a half.

While CGI isn't as common anymore when we have PHP/ASP/etc, it still is out there quite a bit.. so I wouldn't be so quick to write it off.
Latch is offline  
Old 01-31-2005, 03:16 AM   #5 (permalink)
Psycho
 
Location: Boston, MAss., USA
Ok, thanks for the help. The reason I'm testing with Mozilla (and I'm also going to test with Firefox), is the web logs indicate some use with Mozilla, so I want to make sure that all my bases are covered. As to why I'm doing it this way, well, I had some of the scripts already done, so it was easy to modify the existing scripts rather than re-invent the wheel.

And, yea, I know "Perl" is a retronym, but it was pretty late when I put up the original question.

Thanks again.
__________________
I'm gonna be rich and famous, as soon I invent a device that lets you stab people in the face over the internet.
JohnnyRoyale is offline  
Old 02-06-2005, 06:50 PM   #6 (permalink)
Tilted
 
Location: Boston
Quote:
Originally Posted by trache
Forgive the threadjack, but I'd like to ask...

franz:

If CGI is dead, and you dislike HTML-embedded languages, what would you use.. and why?
By far my favorite is mod_perl (as I was recommending to the OP), this is of course a personal preference, but Perl is a natural choice in our environment (a small Bio-/Informatics shop) as all of our non-webified development is done with it.

mod_perl kicks ass not just because of its speed - a huge increase you get pretty much for "free" when moving from CGI - but its tight integration with the Apache request pipeline gives great flexibility and an overall "fun" environment to work with. I've been learning a lot about various deployment strategies, and it's just nutty what you can do

I've had some success with J2EE as well, it's not without its share of evils, but for large, complex projects it offers some nice benefits over the "scripting" style languages.

I've done a bit of work with both PHP and ASP (like so many, I've started on them), and while they do succeed in keeping simple things simple (mostly), but as the projects grow they tend to fight your better instincts - doing The Right Thing just shouldn't be that difficult. I have less experience with ASP out of the two as MS tends to be an all-or-nothing proposition, and so far I've tended to err on the side of "nothing"; though I have heard that some of their more recent stuff is quite nice indeed.

Hope that explains it better; I really don't want to start any "my language is better than your language" things, but I think the young un's should at least know more about what's out there.

Oh, and despite what Paul Graham says, LISP sucks for web development (there goes "not starting anything" out the window ).
franzelneekburm is offline  
Old 02-06-2005, 06:58 PM   #7 (permalink)
Tilted
 
Location: Boston
Quote:
Originally Posted by Latch
How can CGI have been dead for several decades? The Web's only been around for one-one and a half.

While CGI isn't as common anymore when we have PHP/ASP/etc, it still is out there quite a bit.. so I wouldn't be so quick to write it off.
Ok, decades was an overstatement - I was just trying to express the extent to which it has died over the recent years

I should clarify that I was talking about Perl CGI being completely superceded by better Perl technologies (one of which I talk about below); C CGI certainly still has its place - niche as it may be - which it is unlikely to leave any time soon (mostly because it is so niche).

So, since Perl has traditionally accounted for the vast majority of CGI development, and by now it is very difficult to come up with a valid reason to do new Perl web development with CGI, CGI is effectively dead and buried. Incidentally, "existing code-base" very rarely turns out to be a valid reason, especially with Perl
franzelneekburm is offline  
 

Tags
cgi, mozilla, perl, rendering

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 07:20 AM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360