Perl Cookbook

Saving a Form to a File or Mail Pipe

Problem

Your CGI script needs to save or mail the entire form contents to a file.

Solution

To store a form, use the CGI module’s save_parameters function or save method, which take a filehandle argument. You can save to a file:

# first open and exclusively lock the file
open(FH, ">>/tmp/formlog")              or die "can't append to formlog: $!";
flock(FH, 2)                            or die "can't flock formlog: $!";

# either using the procedural interface
use CGI qw(:standard);
save_parameters(*FH);                   # with CGI::save

# or using the object interface
use CGI;
$query = CGI->new();
$query->save(*FH);

close(FH)                               or die "can't close formlog: $!";

Or, save to a pipe, such as one connected to a mailer process:

use CGI qw(:standard);
open(MAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t") or die "can't fork sendmail: $!";
print MAIL <<EOF;
From: $0 (your cgi script)
To: hisname\@hishost.com
Subject: mailed form submission

EOF
save_parameters(*MAIL);
close(MAIL)                             or die "can't close sendmail: $!";

Discussion

Sometimes all you want to do with form data is to save it for later use. The save_parameters function and save method in CGI.pm write form parameters to an open filehandle. That filehandle can be attached to an open file (preferably one opened in append mode and locked, as in the solution), or to a pipe whose other end is a mail program.

File entries are stored one per line as variable=value pairs, with any funny characters URL-escaped. Each record is separated by a line with a single equals sign. These are ...