Hi,
Does anyone have a solution to calling a Ruby method when someone clicks on the Submit button of an HTML form (without Rails)? And an ancillary question, is there a way to catch the form input into Ruby variables? My understanding is that the action element needs to invoke the server side logic which is a bother if you want to get form input and pre-process it.
Thanks!
Serg Koren wrote:
Hi,
Does anyone have a solution to calling a Ruby method when someone clicks on the Submit button of an HTML form (without Rails)? And an ancillary question, is there a way to catch the form input into Ruby variables? My understanding is that the action element needs to invoke the server side logic which is a bother if you want to get form input and pre-process it.Thanks!
You can use Ruby exactly as you would use other languages such as Perl to do this. For instance, place your Ruby script in the cgi-bin directory, set up the web server to know that .rb or .cgi maps to ruby (differs depending on OS and web server), and then write your script. Set the post method of the form to be the URL of your script. Use the Ruby CGI library (http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/cgi/rdoc/index.html\) that handles a lot of the details for you.
This section I pasted below is from the CGI docs regarding form inputs and Ruby variables. From this it should be clear that passing form parameters into Ruby variables is trivial.
-Jim
Parameters
The method params() returns a hash of all parameters in the request as name/value-list pairs, where the value-list is an Array of one or more values. The CGI <http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/cgi/rdoc/classes/CGI.html> object itself also behaves as a hash of parameter names to values, but only returns a single value (as a String) for each parameter name.
For instance, suppose the request contains the parameter "favourite_colours" with the multiple values "blue" and "green". The following behaviour would occur:
cgi.params["favourite_colours"] # => ["blue", "green"]
cgi["favourite_colours"] # => "blue"
If a parameter does not exist, the former method will return an empty array, the latter an empty string. The simplest way to test for existence of a parameter is by the has_key? method.
Um I dont want to call the server. I know I can call the server and handle it via cgi. I want to capture the input and process it locally on the web page client PRIOR to a server side send.. Sort of like javascript. I dont think its doable. I was hoping for magic. Oh well.
Thx anyway.
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 13, 2008, at 6:18 PM, Jim Clark <diegoslice@gmail.com> wrote:
Serg Koren wrote:
Hi,
Does anyone have a solution to calling a Ruby method when someone clicks on the Submit button of an HTML form (without Rails)? And an ancillary question, is there a way to catch the form input into Ruby variables? My understanding is that the action element needs to invoke the server side logic which is a bother if you want to get form input and pre-process it.Thanks!
You can use Ruby exactly as you would use other languages such as Perl to do this. For instance, place your Ruby script in the cgi-bin directory, set up the web server to know that .rb or .cgi maps to ruby (differs depending on OS and web server), and then write your script. Set the post method of the form to be the URL of your script. Use the Ruby CGI library (http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/cgi/rdoc/index.html\) that handles a lot of the details for you.
This section I pasted below is from the CGI docs regarding form inputs and Ruby variables. From this it should be clear that passing form parameters into Ruby variables is trivial.
-Jim
Parameters
The method params() returns a hash of all parameters in the request as name/value-list pairs, where the value-list is an Array of one or more values. The CGI <http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/cgi/rdoc/classes/CGI.html> object itself also behaves as a hash of parameter names to values, but only returns a single value (as a String) for each parameter name.
For instance, suppose the request contains the parameter "favourite_colours" with the multiple values "blue" and "green". The following behaviour would occur:
cgi.params["favourite_colours"] # => ["blue", "green"]
cgi["favourite_colours"] # => "blue"If a parameter does not exist, the former method will return an empty array, the latter an empty string. The simplest way to test for existence of a parameter is by the has_key? method.