CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perlcookiescgi
richard
richard

Reputation: 25

using perl cgi to fetch cookies

I'm trying to inspect cookie values in a cgi script; my test script looks like

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use DBI;
use CGI qw/:standard/;
use CGI::Cookie;

my $cgiH = CGI->new;

print header;
print start_html(-title=>'Cookie Terms'), h1("Cookie Terms"), "<hr>\n";

%cookies = CGI::Cookie->fetch;
foreach $k (keys %cookies) {
    my $term = "$cookies{$k}";
    my $term =~ s/SubjectTerm//;
    print "at $k is $term \n";
}

print end_html;

the relevant input to the script (from an HTTP GET) is

Cookie: SubjectTerm1=ponies
Cookie: SubjectTerm2=horses

(this is verified by using either fiddler or debugging the code in my delphi app). the result of my script (omitting the HTML wrapper) is either

at SubjectTerm1 is  
at SubjectTerm2 is

or if I change the print statement to 

print "at $k is $cookies{$k}\n";

it is

at SubjectTerm1 is SubjectTerm1=ponies; path=/
at SubjectTerm2 is SubjectTerm2=horses; path=/

What I want to arrive it is something like this

at SubjectTerm1 is ponies
at SubjectTerm2 is horses

I know I'm missing something about the hash usage but can't quite figure out what it is. am I not addressing the %cookies hash correctly?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1276

Answers (2)

James Green
James Green

Reputation: 1753

As an aside, before I answer the question, I'd strongly recommend you look at using something other than CGI.pm -- it's the best of late-90s Perl, and other than being included by default in the core perl distribution has little to recommend it.

Some more modern, more featureful alternatives include:

Beyond that, as @Sodved says if you'd included use strict; and use warnings; at the top of your file the first of your problems -- clobbering $term by using my twice -- would have been highlighted immediately.

Once you're using the strict and warnings pragmas (and I'd say, don't leave home without them) you'll also want to change your foreach to either:

foreach (keys %cookies) {
    my $term = $cookies{$_};
...

OR

foreach my $k (keys %cookies) {
    my $term = $cookies{$k};
...

That is, you'll either need to declare the $k variable, or you may prefer to use Perl's built-in $_ inside the loop -- it's purely a matter of style.

Good luck!

Upvotes: 2

Sodved
Sodved

Reputation: 8598

If you had use warnings you would see you are clobbering the $term with the line

my $term =~ s/SubjectTerm//;

Remove the my.

I think you might be able to extract the value is simply changing the assignment to

my $term = $cookies{$k}->value();

and get rid of the s/SubjectTerm//. But not sure about this sorry.

Upvotes: 5

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