Perl for Web Site Management

The Configuration Section

Next comes the script’s configuration section:

# configuration:

$sendmail  = '/usr/sbin/sendmail'; # where is sendmail?
$recipient = '[e-mail]';  # who gets the form data?
$sender    = '[e-mail]';  # default sender?
$site_name = 'My Site';            # name of site to return to after
$site_url  = '/~myname/';          # URL to return to after

Each line stores some text in a scalar variable. Later on in the script, we will use these variables to plug the text they contain into various places. We do the initialization of the variables up at the top of the script, though, because that makes it easy to modify the script later on if something needs to be changed.

And in fact, you need to do some modifying of this section right now because each value is just for illustration purposes. You will need to replace the strings inside the single quotes on the right side of each assignment with a string that makes sense for your own web server. I’ll be walking you through each configuration variable in turn.

The first line in the configuration section is where you give the location on your system where the Unix sendmail program can be found. The script will use this information later on to send the message containing the form data. Use the which command in the shell to find out where on your system sendmail is located (or the whereis command, if which is not supported on your system; see Chapter 2):

[jbc@catlow jbc]$ which sendmail
/usr/sbin/sendmail

Once you’ve located sendmail ...