FormMail Part #2
Step #1
First you need to set up a form. The one I created is called do_form1.shtml and can be found at the following URL. Make sure you have the Readme text file you should have printed out handy so you can reference it.
www.nodntap.com/misc/do_form1.shtml
Step #2
These are the two lines I will be discussing/dissecting.
Opening <form> tag:
<form name="myform1" method="POST" action="http://www.your_site.com (or .net, or whatever)/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl">
Hidden input element:
<input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="recipients_email_address(s)">
Where you see this line:
<!-- WE WILL ADD MORE HIDDEN INPUT ELEMENTS HERE -->
Is where I/we will be updating the HTML document and adding more hidden input elements.
Step #3
First up is the opening <form> tag:
<form name="myform1" method="POST" action="http://www.your_site.com (or .net, or whatever)/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl">
<form method=" "> attribute. ( method="POST" )
Make the method=" " attribute value ~POST~ and make sure you capitalize the word POST because Perl seems to do better if you do (maybe it's CGI, I forget). You can of course use the ~GET~ method for a form but .. DON'T. Just take my word for it. The GET method is more for sending information in a link that is passed via (by way of) the address line in your browser.
Example:
To get Donster's name and location click
<a href="http:/www.nodntap.com/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl?name=Don&location=California">
<b>here</b></a>!
Note the data we are sending at the end of the link address:
?name=Don&location=California
Perl has it's own special way of parsing the GET method, as it does with the POST method. GET is used a lot in Search Engines. But enough about GET as you will probably never use it. The POST method is the one we want.
<form name=" "> attribute. ( name="myform1" )
Name your form in case you end up needing to use a little Javascript with it. The name of your form is up to you. If you have more than 1 form on a page make sure they have different names.
<form action=" "> attribute.
(action="http://www.your_site.com (or .net, or whatever)/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl")
We have to tell the form where to go to get parsed (deciphered/broken down/figured out) so we have to send it to our Perl script called FormMail.pl.
How do we do that? With the action=" " attribute/value. We need to tell our browsers where the script is located so it can access the correct Host and path (address) on the internet in order to find the script and to parse it, or at least try to if there are no errors or empty fields in the form (assuming we set up the form/script to detect empty fields).
In the above coding I have used an absolute address as the action=" " value to send our form goodies to but you could have just as easily used a relative path.
Absolute Addressing
The absolute URL path is the whole path to the Perl script (or any other file for that matter).
http:// = hypertext transfer protocol
www. = world wide web
nodntap.com/ = your web site (domain) name.
cgi-bin/ = directory where your Perl scripts are located.
FormMail.pl = the file you want. In this case a Perl script.
Example:
action="http://www.your_site.com (or .net, or whatever)/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl"
Or using me as an example:
action="http://www.nodntap.com/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl"
Relative Addressing
But this is lots of typing and for us lazy folks there is a shortcut way of doing it called relative addressing! Say you save the above HTML form document in your base directory. For instance:
http://www.nodntap.com/do_form1.html
You type in the address (or use Favorites or Bookmarks) and up pops your form page. Well ... our good old browsers will remember this address so there is actually no need to add it to our action=" " attribute unless the Perl script resides on a different web site. Say everything is on the same web site. In that case all we need to do is to tell the browser what directory to look in for our Perl script and what script (the name of the script/file) we want to use.
Relative address (assuming the HTML form document is in the base directory on your web site):
action="cgi-bin/FormMail.pl"
Your browser will supply the first part, the:
http://www.nodntap.com/
Now lets say you are like me and don't like cluttering the base directory on your web site and put 99% of your files in a directory called programs to keep the base directory cleaned up. The HTML form at the top, which I call do_form1.shtml will be stored there too. In that case we need to 'back out' of this directory (called going up a level) so we can access our cgi-bin directory. This is easy also. Just add ../ for each directory you want to 'back out' of.
The do_form.shtml document is located at:
http://www.nodntap.com/do_form1.html/programs/
So to get to out FormMail.pl script from here we need to go up (or back, depending on how you look at it) one level, and then access our cgi-bin directory.
action="../cgi-bin/FormMail.pl"
That should get you up and running on the <form> line of the code.
Step 4
Hidden input elements.
First off you will never see a hidden input element, or at least you shouldn't. The hidden input elements are there to pass information to the Perl script and are ~NOT~ part of the form you will see on a web page.
Here is a break down of the attributes normally used in a hidden input element.
<input type="hidden" name=" " value=" ">
In the FormMail.pl script only one hidden element is absolutely necessary and that's the one named ~recipient~. Let's take a look at the one in the code above.
<input type="hidden" name="recipient"
value="recipients_email_address(s)">
Recall that in Part #1 I told you that the:
@recipients = variable (list)
had to match this hidden input ~value~ EXACTLY. So .. all you need to do is add the email recipients you inputed in the Perl script (@recipients) to the hidden recipient element in your HTML document. (Be aware that there are other ways to do this but this is the most secure way.)
Here is the @recipients line from the Perl script:
@recipients = '^nodntap@rglobal.net';
Trimming the fat we come up with the email address:
nodntap@rglobal.net
In other words ... me, (or YOU when you change the recipient and @recipients to your own email address).
Check our recipients hidden form element again in the HTML document above.
<input type="hidden" name="recipient"
value="recipients_email_address(s)">
We need to change the value=" " attribute to match that of @recipients in the Perl script.
<input type="hidden" name="recipient"
value="nodntap@rglobal.net">
To go a little further lets say we want the form email stuff to go to another person as well. Say you are running a Fantasy Writing game with two story lines. I'm the Game Master and run one story line, while Mary Jane Stokes is the Game Master of the other and runs the other story line.
You want to join the game and click on the Join link which takes you to the form page that has the form at the beginning of this post. I want both Mary, and myself to receive your email reply so I have to do two things.
Set the @recipients in the Perl script to include Mary's email.
In FormMail.pl script:
@recipients = '^nodntap@rglobal.net','^maryjanes@hotmail.com';
And add her to the hidden recipient input element in my HTML form document above called do_form1.shtml.
In do_form.shtml document:
<input type="hidden" name="recipient"
value="nodntap@rglobal.net,maryjanes@hotmail.com">
If you need to add other recipients to receive the form email, first add their email address to the @recipients variable in the Perl script. Then add them to the hidden recipient form element and separate the emails addresses with a comma ( , ).
Step 5
Make sure you RE-SAVE both the script and the HTML form if you change them and make sure to UPLOAD the new versions to your site.
I can't tell you how many times newbies complain to me about their stuff not working properly because the Perl script is no good when the problem 99 times out of 100 is because they forgot to do something simple like upload the revised versions of their files.
Note #1
When you need to re-upload a Perl script you do NOT have to reset the permission on it. The permission should stay the same for you but if things just aren't going right you might just want to use your FTP program and reset the FormMail.pl script permission to 755 anyway (see Part #1 about setting permissions).
Note #2
I used my misc directory and not my programs directory, I also used my hotmail account as the recipient, and I called FormMail.pl = formmail2.pl.
Note #3
Take my advise and rename the FormMail.pl to formmail.pl and use all lower case letters. Your browser and Host will thank you for it. Also don't use spaces in your filenames but you can use the underslash ( _ ).
Next Time:
Next time I will break down more of the hidden input elements and hopefully things will go a little faster now that we have the form set-up and the initial stuff out of the way.
You can view these tutorials (in a more complete form) here:
http://www.nodntap.com/programs/formmail_1.shtml
Don S.
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