[WEB4LIB] CGI SCRIPTS

[Bill Feidt]

On a properly configured UNIX box, with a securely configured Web
server, you will need to have a cgi program in the cgi-bin directory
if want to parse forms with cgi.

However, there are some excellent prefabricated cgi form parsers 
available. One that I like a lot is a PERL script called 
"Alien Form":

  http://www.cgi.tj/scripts/alienform/

If you can convince your IT folks to make the script available in
your cgi-bin directory, you can write you own configuration files
to process any form(s) you like and the configuration files reside 
outside of cgi-bin. Setting this all up is really surprisingly 
straightfoward and with AF it's possible to create some pretty 
complex output using the parsed data from your forms. AF allows
you to use user-supplied form data to send E-mail(s) and/or write
to files. It allows you to format the output any way you like,
with form variables inserted exactly where you specify, and 
surrounded by the text you specify.

The beauty of this approach is that you don't have to do any actual
progamming. You only need to set up the configuration files.

You do need to have access to an SMTP server in order to have AF
send your E-mails, but most UNIX boxes are configured to permit SMTP,
at least to those with accounts on the machine.

AF is free and the author only asks that you link to his site from
your form(s). Of course, I'm only a pleased user, and have no 
connection to AF and derive no benefit from other's use of it.

Bill Feidt
wfeidt at nal.usda.gov

On Thursday, February 18, 1999 at 6:59 PM Carol Resco <resco at admin.ogi.edu>
wrote:

>We are a small library with a small library staff. Our web pages our
>loaded on a UNIX machine which is under the jurisdiction of our IT
>dept. We are able to access our web directory on the UNIX machine and
>make any changes we want to the look of the site. However, we have
>recently had some conflict with the IT dept over the use of forms. We
>want to put up some forms for interlibrary loan requests, new book
>suggestions, reserve books, etc. but do not have the expertise for cgi
>scripts. I think that we could probably download some ready made
>scripts but the IT dept. will not give us access to the cgi-bin
>directory. 

>My questions to those of you who probably know much more are : Do we
>need to get access to the cgi bin? Could I load cgi scripts into my
>current web directory? Should we really learn some programming before
>we attempt to create forms?