comment on

This is a job for AJAX. Instead of using document.location to redirect to another page, what you need to do is:

Create an XMLHttpRequest object.
Use that object to make a request (i.e., invoke your perl cgi script).
Define a response handler that will receive the output of your script and insert it into your page, you can create an empty div element to act as a placeholder for this.
After handling each response, setup the next request (this is how you would loop through all your dates)

Here's a simple demo I had laying around that does something similar:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">

function createRequestObject() { 
  var req; 
  if (window.XMLHttpRequest) { // Firefox, Safari, Opera... 
    req = new XMLHttpRequest();  
  } else if (window.ActiveXObject) { // Internet Explorer 5+ 
    req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");  
  } else { 
    // error creating the request object, 
    // (maybe an old browser is being used?)
    alert('There was a problem creating the XMLHttpRequest object'); 
    req = '';
  }
  return req; 
} 
     
// Make the XMLHttpRequest object 
var http = createRequestObject(); 
sendRequest();
     
function sendRequest() { 
  // Open perl script for requests 
  var now = new Date();
  http.open('GET', 'http://' + document.domain +  '/cgi-bin/ajax/demo.
+pl?nocache='+now.getTime(), true); 
  http.onreadystatechange = handleResponse; 
  http.send(null); 
} 
     
function handleResponse() { 
  if(http.readyState == 4 && http.status == 200){ 
    var response = http.responseText; // Text returned FROM perl scrip
+t 
    if(response) { // UPDATE ajaxText content 
      document.getElementById("ajaxText").innerHTML = response; 
      setTimeout('sendRequest()', 5000); 
    }
  }
} 
</script>
</head>
<body>
<p>The message is...</p>
<div id="ajaxText" >Hello World!</div>
</body> </html>
[download]

This is just a demo. The demo.pl cgi script simply prints out a random text string:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
print "content-type: text/html\n\n";

my @messages = (
  "This is message 1",
  "This is message 2",
  "This is message 3",
  "This is message 4",
  "This is message 5",
);

# print a random message
print @messages[rand @messages] , "\n";
[download]

The response handler calls this script every 5 seconds using setTimeout(). Note that I append the epoch time to the cgi script query string so that the browser won't simply cache the first response and use it over and over (that's a common ajax gotcha). When you view the html page in your browser, you should see the message change randomly every 5 seconds.

I hope that helps get you moving in the right direction. Good luck!

In reply to Re: How to simulate? by scorpio17
in thread How to simulate? by isi

Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.


good chemistry is complicated, and a little bit messy -LW
	PerlMonks