/ 
CGI-PathInfo-1.00
River stage zero No dependents
/ CGI::PathInfo

NAME

CGI::PathInfo - A lightweight CGI processing package for using PATH_INFO like GET method form parameters

SYNOPSIS

use CGI::PathInfo;

my $path_info = CGI::PathInfo->new;
my ($form_field_value) = $path_info->param('some_field_name');

DESCRIPTION

Provides a micro-weight equivalent to the CPAN CGI.pm module that permits the use of the Apache CGI environment variable 'PATH_INFO' as a functional equivalent to the GET method 'QUERY_STRING'.

Rather than attempt to address every possible need of a CGI programmer, it provides the _minimum_ functions needed for CGI such as parameter decoding, URL encoding and decoding.

The parameters decoding interface is somewhat compatible with the CGI.pm module. No provision is made for generating HTTP or HTML on your behalf - you are expected to be conversant with how to put together any HTML or HTTP you need.

CHANGES

1.00 21 July 2000  - Initial public release.

METHODS

new;

Creates a new instance of the CGI::PathInfo object and decodes any 'PATH_INFO' parameters.

Example:

use CGI::PathInfo;

my $path_info = CGI::PathInfo->new;

The defaults are for the parameters to be seperated by '/' characters with name/value pairs linked by '-' and with leading or trailing '/' characters ignored.

Ex:

 $ENV{'PATH_INFO'} = '/yesterday-monday/tomorrow-wednesday';

 decodes to

  'yesterday' -> 'monday'

   'tomorrow' -> 'wednesday'

Values are read using the 'param' method.

Any of the defaults may be overridden by specifying them in the invokation of 'new'.

Example:

my $path_info = CGI::PathInfo->new({  Eq => '=',
                                    SplitOn => '&',
              });

It is probably a Bad Idea (tm) to set the Eq or SplitOn values to a letter or a number (A-Za-z0-9) unless you are a wizard at encodings.

The defaults were chosen to maximize the likelyhood that CGI backed URLs will be crawled by search engines and that MSIE won't try something stupid because of a '.tla' on a URL.

param([$fieldname]);

Called as $path_info->param(); it returns the list of all defined parameter fields in the same order they appear in the data in PATH_INFO.

Called as $path_info->param($fieldname); it returns the value (or array of values for multiple occurances of the same field name) assigned to that $fieldname. If there is more than one value, the values are returned in the same order they appeared in the data from user agent. If called in a scalar context when several values are present for specified parameter, the *first* value will be returned.

Examples:

my (@form_fields) = $path_info->param;

my (@multi_pick_field) = $path_info->param('pick_field_name');

my ($form_field_value) = $path_info->param('some_field_name');

You can also use the param method to set param values to new values. These values will be returned by this CGI::PathInfo object as if they had been found in the originally processed PATH_INFO data. This will not affect a seperately created instance of CGI::PathInfo.

Examples:

$path_info->param( 'name' => 'Joe Shmoe' );

$path_info->param({ 'name' => 'Joe Shmoe', 'birth_date' => '06/25/1966' });

$path_info->param({ 'pick_list' => ['01','05','07'] });
calling_parms_table;

Returns a formatted HTML table containing all the PATH_INFO parameters for debugging purposes

Example:

print $path_info->calling_parms_table;
url_encode($string);

Returns a URL encoding of the input string. Anything except 0-9a-zA-Z is escaped to %xx form.

The idea is to reserve all other characters for potential use as parameter or key/value seperators.

Example:

my $url_encoded_string = $path_info->url_encode($string);
url_decode($string);

Returns URL *decoding* of input string (%xx substitutions are decoded to their actual values).

Example:

my $url_decoded_string = $path_info->url_decode($string);

BUGS

None known.

TODO

Who knows?

AUTHORS

Benjamin Franz <snowhare@nihongo.org>

VERSION

Version 1.00 22 July 2000

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) Benjamin Franz and FreeRun Technologies July 2000. All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.