[prog] Calling a perl program from within PHP

[Gareth Anderson]

Hi,

> > Cannot have a .htaccess file (which would easily do the
> > authentication) in a cgi-bin directory.
> 
> This is not strictly true.  However it may be true -in your case- if > your system administrator has set:
> 
> Allow Override = 0
> 
> in the Apache config.  You might get somewhere by asking them nicely if
> they could please allow you to have .htaccess files in *your* cgi-bin.

I seriously doubt I could convince a university to make changes to a
single account for myself.

> > Cannot have a cgi script outside the cgi-bin directory (but can have > > .htaccess outside there).
> 
> Yup.  Although once again, this is configurable.

Yes, monash's configuration is locked down, no POST method to stuff
not in cgi-bin and GET method does not work outside cgi-bin.

> > Cgi-wrap removes what I'm trying to get (the username).

What I mean is that cgi-wrap will run the program as myself.
There goes the REMOTE_USER even if I could get to it.

> You could do form-based + cookies authentication.  This is usually nicer > than .htaccess and has the advantage that if your site is accessed at a > public workstation then failure to close down the browser does not
> *necessarily* mean that identity spoofing can occur.

I've got no idea how to do cookies.
I'd rather rely on authcate, its sorta simpler...(once I do get PHP),
and I want it restricted to monash-only.

> Hmm.  Perl can use Java libraries and Python libraries and Ruby > libraries (plus many more).  Many of those languages can use Perl > libraries too.  However, Perl and PHP don't mix as well together.

Damn :(

> The problem is that the cgi program expects a certain setup including a > host of environment variables, input on STDIN and STDOUT to be the > webpage.  Calling one from the other is therefore necessarily ugly.

Yes, thats what I was afraid of.

> Having said that, it's easier to call Perl this way from PHP than the > reverse.  I'd do something like:
> 
> <?
>        /* Set up any extra environment bits */
>        system('/usr/bin/perl myprogramname');
> 
>        /* Do anything that needs doing */
> ?>
> 

> Having said all of that, If your PHP script can work, I'd be seriously > wondering why your Perl script cannot.  It means one of the enviroments > is probably badly setup.

Yes, yoyo the student run server is said to have broken CGI for now
but PHP is still working.

> Yes, you could do that.

I might :)

> It'll need to be executable by the process which runs the PHP script, or > you need to make it readable by this process and then execute it by > calling the interpretor.

Yes...

> Calling system should (please double-check) fork such that the new > process's STDOUT goes to your original STDOUT which should achieve what > you want.

A quick read has me confused :).
I know the C version does do this, I guess I will have to try it when
I do get PHP access...

http://au.php.net/manual/en/function.system.php

> Yes that would probably work as well.  And if you don't need anything > else done after you call the Perl program then exec is probably better.

Oh ok, I'll try both then. The perl program will be the last thing.

> Heh.  I can see that with your username, you could hit that assumption.

:)
Well exams are over, I'm on holiday.

I've already being accused of abuse of staff privileges for discussing
this with monash's technical staff (from my staff account at monash).

> 
> All the best,

Thankyou, if all else fails I''ll re-write it in PHP.

The only hard thing is the persistent array can't exist in PHP :(.

It was suggested this:
$usernames = file('usernames.txt');

I could do that with some dodgy programming (ie. messy but it will work).

Does PHP have anything close to a dictionary/associative array/hash
that can be written and read from disk easily?

Regards,
Gareth