Re: CGI Input with Escaped Characters

[shmem]

If it is a GET query, then the original data should be in $ENV{QUERY_STRING} iirc.

[hoyt]

That looks correct, and may work, but I try to keep the Perl code so that it'll work from command line too for troubleshooting. When I output the $ENV{} from command line, it doesn't show to that as an available key. Would that only work from a web posting action? Thanks!

[shmem]

You can pass CGI parameters on the command, using data=foo api_key=1234. See the DEBUGGING section of CGI. But I doubt that CGI will shoehorn that back into %ENV.

You could set the environment variable on the command line also

$ env QUERY_STRING=data=foo&api_key=laurel%26hardy script.cgi

or you could check inside your script if it is run from the commandline:

if (-t STDIN) {
    # command line. for params, substitute special chars (e.g. & => %2
+6)
    # (there must be a module out there which does that for you)
} else {
    # via webserver
}