If there is no interactivity then you may still want to look at using something like Template Toolkit <https://metacpan.org/module/Template> or Plack::Middleware::TemplateToolkit so maintenance of your HTML files (and other assets) is easier.
Below is a list of a few frameworks with comments which might help you in making a decision, depending on your specific requirements. Start by reading the docs, then ask questions on the relevant mailing list or IRC channel.
All of these interact with or use Plack which is worth understanding the basics of when building a website in Perl (there is a lot of useful Plack::Middleware <https://metacpan.org/search?q=plack%3A%3Amiddleware>).
Plack is a set of tools for using the PSGI stack. It contains middleware <https://metacpan.org/search?q=plack%3A%3Amiddleware> components, a reference server and utilities for Web application frameworks. Plack is like Ruby's Rack or Python's Paste for WSGI.
You could build a web site using Plack and your own code, but for anything other than a very basic web site, using a web framework (that uses Plack) is a better option.
You can use URI::Find to extract URLs from an arbitrary text document.
Use the libwww-perl distribution. The LWP::Simple module can fetch web resources and give their content back to you as a string:
use LWP::Simple qw(get);
my $html = get( "http://www.example.com/index.html" );
It can also store the resource directly in a file:
use LWP::Simple qw(getstore);
getstore( "http://www.example.com/index.html", "foo.html" );
If you need to do something more complicated, you can use LWP::UserAgent module to create your own user-agent (e.g. browser) to get the job done. If you want to simulate an interactive web browser, you can use the WWW::Mechanize module.
If you're submitting values using the GET method, create a URL and encode the form using the "query_form" method:
use LWP::Simple;
use URI::URL;
my $url = url('L<http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod')>;
$url->query_form(module => 'DB_File', readme => 1);
$content = get($url);
If you're using the POST method, create your own user agent and encode the content appropriately.
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(POST);
use LWP::UserAgent;
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
my $req = POST 'L<http://www.perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod'>,
[ module => 'DB_File', readme => 1 ];
my $content = $ua->request($req)->as_string;
To encode a string yourself, use the URI::Escape module. The "uri_escape" function returns the escaped string:
my $original = "Colon : Hash # Percent %";
my $escaped = uri_escape( $original );
print "$escaped\n"; # 'Colon%20%3A%20Hash%20%23%20Percent%20%25'
To decode the string, use the "uri_unescape" function:
my $unescaped = uri_unescape( $escaped );
print $unescaped; # back to original
Remember not to encode a full URI, you need to escape each component separately and then join them together.
$c->res->redirect($url);
$c->detach();
If you are using Plack (which most frameworks do), then Plack::Middleware::Rewrite is worth looking at if you are migrating from Apache or have URL's you want to always redirect.
Alternativly look at Plack::Middleware::Auth::Basic, or one of the other Plack authentication <https://metacpan.org/search?q=plack+auth> options.
You can't prevent people from sending your script bad data. Even if you add some client-side checks, people may disable them or bypass them completely. For instance, someone might use a module such as LWP to submit to your web site. If you want to prevent data that try to use SQL injection or other sorts of attacks (and you should want to), you have to not trust any data that enter your program.
The perlsec documentation has general advice about data security. If you are using the DBI module, use placeholder to fill in data. If you are running external programs with "system" or "exec", use the list forms. There are many other precautions that you should take, too many to list here, and most of them fall under the category of not using any data that you don't intend to use. Trust no one.
use Email::MIME;
my $message = Email::MIME->new($rfc2822);
my $subject = $message->header('Subject');
my $from = $message->header('From');
If you've already got some other kind of email object, consider passing it to Email::Abstract and then using its cast method to get an Email::MIME object:
my $mail_message_object = read_message();
my $abstract = Email::Abstract->new($mail_message_object);
my $email_mime_object = $abstract->cast('Email::MIME');
This isn't as simple a question as it sounds. There are two parts:
a) How do I verify that an email address is correctly formatted?
b) How do I verify that an email address targets a valid recipient?
Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a human on the other end to answer you, you cannot fully answer part b, but the Email::Valid module will do both part a and part b as far as you can in real-time.
Our best advice for verifying a person's mail address is to have them enter their address twice, just as you normally do to change a password. This usually weeds out typos. If both versions match, send mail to that address with a personal message. If you get the message back and they've followed your directions, you can be reasonably assured that it's real.
A related strategy that's less open to forgery is to give them a PIN (personal ID number). Record the address and PIN (best that it be a random one) for later processing. In the mail you send, include a link to your site with the PIN included. If the mail bounces, you know it's not valid. If they don't click on the link, either they forged the address or (assuming they got the message) following through wasn't important so you don't need to worry about it.
use MIME::Base64;
my $decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
The Email::MIME module can decode base 64-encoded email message parts transparently so the developer doesn't need to worry about it.
The exception is for organization-specific email (e.g. foo@yourcompany.com) where policy can be codified in your program. In that case, you could look at $ENV{USER}, $ENV{LOGNAME}, and getpwuid($<) in scalar context, like so:
my $user_name = getpwuid($<)
But you still cannot make assumptions about whether this is correct, unless your policy says it is. You really are best off asking the user.
# first, create your message
my $message = Email::MIME->create(
header_str => [
From => 'you@example.com',
To => 'friend@example.com',
Subject => 'Happy birthday!',
],
attributes => {
encoding => 'quoted-printable',
charset => 'utf-8',
},
body_str => "Happy birthday to you!\n",
);
use Email::Sender::Simple qw(sendmail);
sendmail($message);
By default, Email::Sender::Simple will try `sendmail` first, if it exists in your $PATH. This generally isn't the case. If there's a remote mail server you use to send mail, consider investigating one of the Transport classes. At time of writing, the available transports include:
Telling Email::Sender::Simple to use your transport is straightforward.
sendmail(
$message,
{
transport => $email_sender_transport_object,
}
);
use Email::Folder;
my $folder = Email::Folder->new('/path/to/email/folder');
while(my $message = $folder->next_message) {
# next_message returns Email::Simple objects, but we want
# Email::MIME objects as they're more robust
my $mime = Email::MIME->new($message->as_string);
}
There are different classes in the Email::Folder namespace for supporting various mailbox types. Note that these modules are generally rather limited and only support reading rather than writing.
The Net::Domain module, which is part of the Standard Library starting in Perl 5.7.3, can get you the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), the host name, or the domain name.
use Net::Domain qw(hostname hostfqdn hostdomain);
my $host = hostfqdn();
The Sys::Hostname module, part of the Standard Library, can also get the hostname:
use Sys::Hostname;
$host = hostname();
The Sys::Hostname::Long module takes a different approach and tries harder to return the fully qualified hostname:
use Sys::Hostname::Long 'hostname_long'; my $hostname = hostname_long();
To get the IP address, you can use the "gethostbyname" built-in function to turn the name into a number. To turn that number into the dotted octet form (a.b.c.d) that most people expect, use the "inet_ntoa" function from the Socket module, which also comes with perl.
use Socket;
my $address = inet_ntoa(
scalar gethostbyname( $host || 'localhost' )
);
This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in this file are hereby placed into the public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit would be courteous but is not required.