Question

I have a scriptA.cgi which calls scriptB.cgi.

scriptB.cgi requires a param.

I have tried both
inside scriptA.cgi I have tried:

`perl -l scriptB.cgi foo="toast is good" `;

as well as

@args = ("perl", "-l", "scriptB.cgi", "foo=\"toast is good\"");
system(@args);

When I call scriptA.cgi from the command line it works as expected.
However when I call scriptA.cgi through the browser scriptB.cgi is executed but it fails to read the incoming param and prints foo as empty.

Is there a less ugly way to call one cgi from another and pass in params?

scriptB does not have to be a cgi, if it’s easier to do this with a straight .pl and args, I’m happy to do that too… but the arg has to be a quoted string with spaces.

All thoughts welcome.

Answer 1

If there is common functionality shared between many scripts, put it in a module

Modules may seem intimidating, but they are really very simple.

File SMSTools.pm:

package SMSTools;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Exporter qw(import);

# Name subs (and variables, but don't do that) to export to calling code:
our @EXPORT_OK = qw( send_sms_message );

our @EXPORT = @EXPORT_OK;  
# Generally you should export nothing by default.
# However, for simple cases where there is only one key function
# provided by a module, I believe it is reasonable to export it by default.


sub send_sms_message {
    my $phone_number = shift;
    my $message      = shift;

    # Do stuff.

    return; # Return true on successful send.
}

# Various supporting subroutines as needed.

1;  # Any true value.

Now, to use your module in foo.cgi:

use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;

use SMSTools;

my $q = CGI->new;

my $number = $q->param_fetch( 'number');
my $message = $q->param_fetch( 'msg');

print 
    $q->header,
    $q->start_html,
    (    send_sms_message($number, $message) 
         ? $q->h1("Sent SMS Message") 
         : $q->h1("Message Failed")
    ),
    q->end_html; 

See perlmod, and the docs for Exporter for more information.