I have a form that uses the POST method to send data to a CGI script. The form looks like this:

    <form action="cgi-bin/message.cgi" method="POST">
            Name:  <input type=text name="name">
            Email: <input type=text name="email">
            Message:
            <textarea name="message" cols=48 rows=5></textarea>
            <input type="submit" value="Post">
    </form>

Problem is, nothing is received by message.cgi. I check which REQUEST_METHOD is being used and it tells me GET. When I read from STDIN, I get nothing.

Now when I modify message.cgi so it works for the GET method and type in the values in the URL, it works so it's not a server problem.

The code in message.cgi is this,

    read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
    print "<b>Buffer:</b> $buffer\n";

...pretty standard stuff but there is nothing in buffer.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Alan

hey, i dunno why thats not working but anyway ive got a subroutine that'l make life alot easier for you...

sub read_input
{
    local ($buffer, @pairs, $pair, $name, $value, %FORM);
    $ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} =~ tr/a-z/A-Z/;
    if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq "POST")
    {
	read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
    } else
    {
	$buffer = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
    }
    # Split information into name/value pairs
    @pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);
    foreach $pair (@pairs)
    {
	($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);
	$value =~ tr/+/ /;
	$value =~ s/%(..)/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
	$FORM{$name} = $value;
    }
    %FORM;
}

now all thats left to is use it:

    my %query = &read_input;

so say your form had a textbox called "email" you use:

    $query{email}

to get whatever the submitter entered, also it will automatically fix up any special characters sent into the form.

Hope it works for you!!