CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsperlpdffile-type
Wurst Max
Wurst Max

Reputation: 21

Perl script to download a file and check filetype

What I want to do is fairly simple: 1) download a file from hard-coded URL (it will always stay the same) 2) check if the file really is a PDF (I thought that it is best to check the magic number %PDF) 3) if so, rename file and move to folder xy||if not, rename accordingly.

Note: this will be required to run on a Windows 7 system.

Here is my code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
use POSIX qw( strftime );
use File::Copy;
use File::Type;

my $date = strftime("%m/%d/%Y", localtime);
my $url  = "http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options"
          ."/advanced-analytics/r-enterprise/ore-reference-manual-1882822.pdf"; 

my $dlfile = "Test.pdf";
my $resp = '';
my $srcdir = "C:\\pdfscripthome";
my $dest = "C:\\pdfdump";
my $old = "$srcdir/$dlfile";
$resp = getstore( $url, $dlfile );

sub CheckFileType {
    my $chkfile="$srcdir//Test.pdf";
    my $ft = File::Type->new();
    my $file_type = $ft->mime_type($chkfile);

    if ( $file_type eq 'application/pdf' ) {
        move( $old, $dest ) or die "Move $old -> $dest failed: $!";
    }
    else {
        rename ("//$srcdir/Test.pdf", "//$srcdir/NotAValidPDFFile.pdf" )
        || die ("Error in renaming");
    }
}

sub main{
    &CheckFileType();
}

&main;

What happens when I try to execute, is that nothing happens. Strangely, when I comment

use File::Type;

out, it downloads the file (of course the check doesn't happen).

I assume there is an error somewhere in sub CheckFileType { } but I can't see it.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1053

Answers (1)

Double Zeebrah Flexinhammer
Double Zeebrah Flexinhammer

Reputation: 21

I successfully executed your Perl program (without changes) on Windows 7 with Strawberry Perl v5.20.2.

I was tempted to suggest several changes, but I decided instead to offer one simple change which will cause your program to complete successfully.

In the call to mime_type() on line 25, replace the argument $chkfile with $dlfile. This will cause mime_type() to look for the file stored during the call to getstore() on line 16, where $dlfile is passed as an argument specifying the filename.

Line 25 (original):

my $file_type = $ft->mime_type($chkfile);

Line 25 (incorporating suggested change):

my $file_type = $ft->mime_type($dlfile);

Without changes, your Perl program first stores the downloaded PDF file relative to the user's current working directory as the filename .\Test.pdf, then later expects to find the PDF file using the absolute path C:\pdfscripthome\Test.pdf.

If the user's current working directory is C:\pdfscripthome the program succeeds. In cases where the user's current working directory is not C:\pdfscripthome, the program fails because the argument passed in the call to mime_type() contains the absolute path C:\pdfscripthome\Test.pdf.

Upvotes: 2

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