Simple Form Verifier in Perl

I'm trying to create a simple form verifier that will check to see if any input has been entered in each field of the form and if not it will print an error telling the user which fields they need to enter info into. It seems to be working but it's printing the errors before the header on the error output page. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

#!/usr/bin/perl
#c07ex1.cgi - saves form data to a file, and creates
#three different dynamic Web pages
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
use CGI qw(:standard -debug);

#prevent Perl from creating undeclared variables
use strict;

#declare variables
my ($name, $email, $comments, $data_ok);

if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq "POST") {
($name, $email, $comments) = get_input();
$data_ok = validate_input();
if ($data_ok eq "Y") {
save_to_file();
create_acknowledgment_page();
}
else {
create_error_page();
}
}
else {
create_comments_page();
}
exit;

#*****user-defined functions*****
sub get_input {
return param('Name'), param('Email'), param('Comments');
} #end get_input

sub validate_input {
my $valid = "Y";
if ($name eq "") {
$valid = "N";
print "Please enter your name.<br>\n";
}
if ($email eq "") {
$valid = "N";
print "Please enter your email address.<br>\n";
}
if ($comments eq "") {
$valid = "N";
print "Please enter a comment.<br>\n";
}
return $valid;
} #end validate_input

sub save_to_file {
open(OUTFILE, ">>", "c07ex1.txt")
or die "Error opening c07ex1.txt for save. $!, stopped";
print OUTFILE "$name¦$email¦$comments\n";
close(OUTFILE);
} #end save_to_file

sub create_acknowledgment_page {
print "<HTML>\n";
print "<HEAD><TITLE>International Coffees</TITLE></HEAD>\n";
print "<BODY>\n";
print "<H2>$name, thank you for the following \n";
print "comments:<BR><BR>$comments\n";
print "</H2></BODY></HTML>\n";
} #end create_acknowledgment_page

sub create_error_page {
print "<HTML>\n";
print "<HEAD><TITLE>International Coffees</TITLE></HEAD>\n";
print "<BODY>\n";
print "<H2>Please return to the form and \n";
print "complete the following items.</H2>\n";
print "$_[0]\n";
print "</BODY></HTML>\n";
} #end create_error_page

sub create_comments_page {
my (@records, $name_field, $email_field, $com_field);

open(INFILE, "<", "c07ex1.txt")
or die "Error opening c07ex1.txt. $!, stopped";

print "<HTML>\n";
print "<HEAD><TITLE>International Coffees</TITLE></HEAD>\n";
print "<BODY>\n";
print "<H2>What other coffee lovers say \n";
print "about our coffees:</H2>\n";
@records = <INFILE>;
close(INFILE);
foreach my $rec (@records) {
chomp($rec);
($name_field, $email_field, $com_field) = split(/\¦/, $rec);
print "<B>Name:</B> $name_field<BR>\n";
print "<B>Comments:</B> $com_field<BR>\n";
print "<HR>";
}
print "</BODY></HTML>\n";
} #end create_comments_page

Simple Form Verifier in Perl

web_young

web_young

Newbie77

web_young

Newbie77

Join The Conversation

Moderators and Top Contributors

Hot Threads This Week