Creating PostScript from a Web Interface

One interesting use of the PostScript modules is as a means of creating printable documents from CGI scripts on the Web. As an example, we’ll design a web page for an online record label, Apocabilly Records, that ships every purchase with a shipping invoice. Our web page processes the order and creates a PostScript shipping invoice all at once.

The web page takes information submitted from an HTML form and calls a script called processorder.cgi, which logs the order in some sort of database and creates the shipping invoice. The web page that the customer sees is shown in Figure 11-1. It is assumed that prior to this point, a shopping-cart script was used to catalog the user’s selections as he navigated the site.

The order form for Apocabilly Records automatically creates a PostScript invoice
Figure 11-1. The order form for Apocabilly Records automatically creates a PostScript invoice

The HTML code for this web page would look something like Example 11-1. Notice the FORM element, with fields to retrieve the customer’s name, address, and city/state/zip, and the hidden text fields containing the merchandise order and the total amount of the purchase. These fields were created by our hypothetical shopping-cart script and passed on to the processorder.cgi script upon submission of the form for inclusion in the final shipping invoice.

Example 11-1. The HTML document for the CGI example
<HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" ...

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