Question

I am working on a file and I am trying to understand how to process a form in hopes of passing a hidden field. for simplicity, lets say i want my scipt to simply show the value of the hidden field when it is first presented to the user, incremented by one, and after it is ‘submitted’, the new script displayed with the updated hidden field. I am trying to gain insight on the explicit procedure so i can apply it to one of my current projects.
I have searched the web but most examples simply confuse me, can anyone chime in?

Answer 1

Values submitted by the form can be retrieved using the CGI module (since you haven’t shown any code, I don’t know whether you’re using CGI or attempting to handle the CGI interactions by hand; if you’re doing it by hand, You’re Doing It Wrong) and its param method.

Given the HTML form:

<form action='my_script.cgi' method=POST>
  <input type=hidden name=hidden_field value=1>
  <input type=submit>
</form>

You can retrieve the hidden value with (in my_script.cgi):

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use CGI;

my $q = CGI->new;
my $hidden_value = $q->param('hidden_field');