Re: Tech meeting note
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 12:03:20AM +, Kate L Pugh wrote: On Mon 13 Jan 2003, David Cantrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: LBW probably last two weeks of August Location? Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. -- Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Do not be afraid of cooking, as your ingredients will know and misbehave -- Fergus Henderson
Potential new module
I've been reviewing what I have learned from the LWP stuff I have been doing
for Grubstreet. This involved form filling and POST method.
I was struck with the feeling that boiling down the form data is something that
has probably been done many times over - but a search didn't find anything
obvious.
I feel a CPAN module coming on (unless it's already been done and I've missed
it), but I'm stuck on which namespace to use: HTML::Formdata, HTTP::Formdata,
LWP::HTMLForm, thoughts please.
From the existing code that I have written, is a sub formdata, which takes the
HTML page and form name as parameters. The form name is optional; if no form
name is specified, the routine picks up the first form on the page.
sub formdata {
my ($html,$formname) = @_;
my $tp = HTML::TokeParser-new(\$html) or die Bad HTML form;
while (my $form = $tp-get_tag('form')) {
last if !$formname || ($form-[1]{name} eq $formname);
$tp-get_text('/form');
}
my @form;
while (my $field = $tp-get_tag('input','select','textarea')) {
my ($tag,$attr) = @$field;
if ($tag eq 'textarea') {
my $text = $tp-get_text('/textarea');
push @form,$attr-{name},$text;
next;
}
if ($tag eq 'select') {
my $selected;
while (my $tok = $tp-get_token) {
last if $tok-[-1] =~ m(/select)i;
my ($typ,$tag,$att) = @$tok;
next unless $typ eq 'S' $tag eq 'option';
$selected = $att-{value} if exists $att-{selected};
}
push @form,$attr-{name},$selected if defined $selected;
next;
}
if ($attr-{type} =~ /hidden|password|text/) {
push @form,$attr-{name},$attr-{value};
}
if ($attr-{type} =~ /radio|checkbox/
exists $attr-{checked}) {
push @form,$attr-{name},$attr-{value};
}
}
@form;
}
The sub returns a list of key/value pairs. Thinking about it, I realised that
if the calling code turns it into a hash, this could lose any duplicate keys.
At this point, the light of recognition came on in my mind. This was a very
familiar concept, that of a CGI object.
I could make formdata return a CGI object or something inheriting from CGI,
giving access to all the input fields via $form-param. Besides being capable
of being submitted via a normal POST of encoding type
application/x-www-form-urlencoded, I would also like the code to be able to
handle file uploads and encoding type multipart/form-data.
Has anything like this been done before? Please let me know if I am duplicating
effort here.
Ivor.
Re: Potential new module
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 10:26:40AM -, Ivor Williams wrote: I've been reviewing what I have learned from the LWP stuff I have been doing for Grubstreet. This involved form filling and POST method. I was struck with the feeling that boiling down the form data is something that has probably been done many times over - but a search didn't find anything obvious. Yes, I'm sure it has been. That doesn't mean that anyone ever released it to CPAN, though. :) Between us, london.pm must have written $LARGE_NUMBER of templating systems, but only a couple actually made it out. Or how many reasonably generic CGI-as-dispatch systems were written back in the heady days of dotComNonsense? From the existing code that I have written, is a sub formdata, which takes the HTML page and form name as parameters. The form name is optional; if no form name is specified, the routine picks up the first form on the page. The sub returns a list of key/value pairs. Thinking about it, I realised that if the calling code turns it into a hash, this could lose any duplicate keys. Except for checkboxen (and possibly even then), duplicate keys on forms are a very bad idea. One way I've seen them go horribly wrong is with a couple of URL-compression / cookie-caching proxies as used on The Portal Which Shall Not Be Named. The idea of these doohickeys is to improve access for phones, and other brain-dead clients, by shortening the (RFC-breaking) huge GET URLs that portals always seem to end up with, and by keeping cookies on the server side. By this stage, I'm sure people have guessed how good the hashing and storage of these little sweethearts is. As soon as you start pointing them at forms with duplicate keys, they start dropping data on the floor. The other thing I always try and keep in mind is nested forms. They are a very good way to see how sturdy your application or web-snarfer really is. They're invalid, nasty, rather more common than people seem to realise and have a horrible habit of making otherwise well-behaved web-tech spazz out. I've even seen a (Java) example where if you parse a document containing nested forms as XML, all appears to be well, and then if you cast it back to an HTML-type object, the JVM crashes. Luverly. At this point, the light of recognition came on in my mind. This was a very familiar concept, that of a CGI object. I could make formdata return a CGI object or something inheriting from CGI, giving access to all the input fields via $form-param. Besides being capable of being submitted via a normal POST of encoding type application/x-www-form-urlencoded, I would also like the code to be able to handle file uploads and encoding type multipart/form-data. Please don't make it return a CGI object. CGI.pm is a nasty, bloated piece of crap which should have been retired years ago. It uses what is now very non-standard technology, it leaks memory under mod_perl and in many ways is an example of how not to build a module. Ben
Re: Potential new module
On 14 Jan 2003 10:26:40, Ivor Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
I've been reviewing what I have learned from the LWP stuff I have
been doing for Grubstreet. This involved form filling and POST
method.
I can't work out exactly what you're trying to do (probably because I'm
all ill and feverish), but it looks like WWW::Mechanize. An example:
my $agent = WWW::Mechanize-new();
$agent-get(https://www.ebank.hsbc.co.uk/main/loginmain.jsp;);
# Filling in the login form.
$agent-form(0);
$agent-field(internetBankingID, $opts{bankingid});
$agent-field(telephoneSecurityNumber, $opts{seccode});
$agent-click(ok);
# We're given a redirect, and then need to navigate a frameset.
$agent-follow(0);
$agent-follow(master);
$agent-follow(main);
Does that sound like what you're trying to do? It exposes AoAs (from
HTML::Form) for each form and its elements, and lets you access them by
their name or index on the form.
- Chris.
--
$a=printf.net; Chris Ball | chris@void.$a | www.$a | finger: chris@$a
| 'A good language allows people to say pshaw and ain't and Barbara
| Streisand, no matter how unpleasant the words may sound.' -- Pudge.
Re: VERY OT: Archimedes/RISC OS 3.x file types
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 02:19:32PM +, Raf wrote: Hi. This is a tad off topic and rather than just mail Dave, I figured that I'd see if anyone out there can guide on what I'm doing wrong. I've got an Acorn A4 on my desk and have just copied some ArcFS .arc files from my box onto the A4 via a 1.44 dos floppy. Gah. ArcFS. I do not like ArcFS. OK. Rant over. K? Now, I want to unsparc these, however they aren't set to the correct file type. I've changed the file type to 111, however this doesn't appear to be the correct type and I'm not having any luck here. Does anyone know of a good way by which I can get at these files? When you say unspark do you literally mean you have a copy of !Spark or !Sparkplug? Or do you just me uncompress or access them? Either way, I think the filetype shouldn't matter - run !Spark or !Sparkplug or !SparkFS or !ArcFS (whichever you have) and drag the file to the icon on the icon bar. I believe that all share the same behaviour - if they recognise the file (ie is it not corrupt) they will set the type correctly and then open it. (For the relevant definition of open) You might want to compile nspark (google says http://freshmeat.net/projects/nspark/?topic_id=19%2C42 which in turn links to http://www.arcturus.demon.co.uk/ftp/developers.nspark.html ) as you can then extract them on Unix/whatever. Nicholas Clark
Re: VERY OT: Archimedes/RISC OS 3.x file types
On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Nicholas Clark wrote: On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 02:19:32PM +, Raf wrote: Either way, I think the filetype shouldn't matter - run !Spark or !Sparkplug or !SparkFS or !ArcFS (whichever you have) and drag the file to the icon on the icon bar. I believe that all share the same behaviour - if they recognise the file (ie is it not corrupt) they will set the type correctly and then open it. (For the relevant definition of open) Ok, I think it's corrupted. You might want to compile nspark (google says http://freshmeat.net/projects/nspark/?topic_id=19%2C42 which in turn links to http://www.arcturus.demon.co.uk/ftp/developers.nspark.html ) as you can then extract them on Unix/whatever. Ok, this sounds like a plan. Many Thanks. Rafiq
Re: Potential new module
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 11:56:15AM +, Chris Ball wrote:
On 14 Jan 2003 10:26:40, Ivor Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
I've been reviewing what I have learned from the LWP stuff I have
been doing for Grubstreet. This involved form filling and POST
method.
I can't work out exactly what you're trying to do (probably because I'm
all ill and feverish), but it looks like WWW::Mechanize. An example:
my $agent = WWW::Mechanize-new();
$agent-get(https://www.ebank.hsbc.co.uk/main/loginmain.jsp;);
# Filling in the login form.
$agent-form(0);
$agent-field(internetBankingID, $opts{bankingid});
$agent-field(telephoneSecurityNumber, $opts{seccode});
$agent-click(ok);
# We're given a redirect, and then need to navigate a frameset.
$agent-follow(0);
$agent-follow(master);
$agent-follow(main);
Ooooh nice one - has anyone managed to get Mozilla or some other
browser to do this? I've seen some pretty hairy things with Moz so that
gives me hope.
God, HSBC's site is *pure UI design evil*. I must've logged into the
effing thing eight times yesterday and had to dance around its menus
just to get a transaction list. And why don't they allow download of
more than a month's data?
Paul (GnuCash'ed out)
--
Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/
If this was a very different situation, then cows will give up their
milk.
-- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/
Re: VERY OT: Archimedes/RISC OS 3.x file types
At 14:19 14/01/03, Raf wrote: K? Now, I want to unsparc these, however they aren't set to the correct file type. Sparc should be able to identify any file as a sparc archive and change the file-type appropriately. Just drag the file over to the running program. Gosh that takes me back. Failing that if you look inside the !Spark(plug) application directory you will find a readme which will tell you what the correct number is. I'm posting this to the list as it is an excuse to say that I have three Acorn Risc computers in my cellar willing to go to a good home. Arc310, A3000, A5000. I even have an Acorn monitor, scanner and other stuff too. Alex McLintock Available for java/perl/C++/web development in London, UK or nearby. Apache FOP, Cocoon, Turbine, Struts,XSL:FO, XML, Tomcat, First meeting free.http://www.OWAL.co.uk/
RE: POD for unix
Sorry, I misread the question. I believe doxygen is C++ only. -Original Message- From: Peter Pimley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 14 January 2003 16:08 To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: POD for unix doxygen. Never used it, but there's loads of documentation made by it where I work. I've been told it's very similar to javadoc (which itself is not completely unlike POD) Peter -Original Message- From: Jonathan Peterson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 14 January 2003 15:49 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: POD for unix I was just doing my New Year documentation, and wondered if there was something like POD for unix. In other words, something where instead of writing a big document explaining how a system has been configured, something that slurps up specially formatted comments in various files, together with the actual config information itself, and generates the doc? So, instead of having to say 'the following processes are started automatically at boot time: blah blah blah' Something would just read the contents of /etc/rcx.d and auto-generate that section, using comments in the various startup scripts to provide more info as needed. This would mean admins wandering around the system would be able to see the documentation in the comment files, and additionally it could be extracted out into a general system config document. Anyone know of any such thing? Jon -- Jonathan Peterson Technical Manager, Unified Ltd, +44 (0)20 7383 6092 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
rackmount question
hi all, ok, i'm trying to decide what exactly to put into my 1U rackmount case and thought i'd ask for some advice as i just can't make a decision. firstly, for reference purposes, this box is going to be to running several vmware virtual machines, so whatever i end up with needs to be able to cope with that. my main problem is trying to decide what processor to use. of course, this is partially down to what heatsink/fan i get. so far i've found two that should be suitable, the AKASA AK-350 1U Copper Cooler and the ALPHA PAL153U 1U cooler. now the Akasa apparently supports up to AthlonXP 2000+, Celeron 1.3GHz or P3 1.4GHz, but i've not been able to find any reviews to see how good it really is. I can't find any data on the processors supported by the Alpha, but i have found a review for it (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1571p=6). In this review, however they tested by simulating the typical power usage of a 1GHz AMD Athlon MP (Palomino). since i can find AthlonXP's of 1700+ and 1800+ just either side of the cost of a Celeron 1.3GHz, i think it comes down to one of those chips. I imagine the AthlonXP's would be better than the Celeron, but would like confirmation on that from someone else. And if i do go for one of the Athlon's, is it really going to be cooled enough? I don't particularly want to lose a chip on this. So, anyone got any advice that could help me make a decision? Jody
Re: rackmount question
Jody wrote:
So, anyone got any advice that could help me make a decision?
An aside issue: Where's this being hosted? Is it going in an Airconed
room, and will you be able to get half a U gap between this server and the
next one or are you likely to be sandwidtched inbetween two other
potentially hot servers?
To be honest if you don't need the CPU power (why would you?) I'd prefer
to get something that ran reliably. It's a major pain in the butt going
and sorting out misbehaving co-lo machines.
Mark.
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};
Re: rackmount question
Personally, unless you can find a really good heatsink *designed* for 1U high operation on AMD (this may involve searching http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ rather carefully) and a power supply which is meaty enough - I think you are looking at Intel Hardware. On Tue, 2003-01-14 at 17:44, Jody Belka wrote: hi all, ok, i'm trying to decide what exactly to put into my 1U rackmount case and thought i'd ask for some advice as i just can't make a decision. firstly, for reference purposes, this box is going to be to running several vmware virtual machines, so whatever i end up with needs to be able to cope with that. my main problem is trying to decide what processor to use. of course, this is partially down to what heatsink/fan i get. so far i've found two that should be suitable, the AKASA AK-350 1U Copper Cooler and the ALPHA PAL153U 1U cooler. now the Akasa apparently supports up to AthlonXP 2000+, Celeron 1.3GHz or P3 1.4GHz, but i've not been able to find any reviews to see how good it really is. I can't find any data on the processors supported by the Alpha, but i have found a review for it (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1571p=6). In this review, however they tested by simulating the typical power usage of a 1GHz AMD Athlon MP (Palomino). since i can find AthlonXP's of 1700+ and 1800+ just either side of the cost of a Celeron 1.3GHz, i think it comes down to one of those chips. I imagine the AthlonXP's would be better than the Celeron, but would like confirmation on that from someone else. And if i do go for one of the Athlon's, is it really going to be cooled enough? I don't particularly want to lose a chip on this. So, anyone got any advice that could help me make a decision? Jody -- Please Note: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
Re: rackmount question
On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Jody Belka wrote: So, anyone got any advice that could help me make a decision? A lot of your cooling effects will depend on what else is sitting around your machine. We've tried several 1U boxes tha are supposed to run happily. On their own, they do, but some of them obviously like to radiate heat, as well as convect it. Stack 10 of them together, and watch them die within a few hours/day/weeks. So, if this is a just a one-off, and it's sitting in the middle of someone elses datacentre with all sorts of other kit, most hardware will be fine. If you can afford a bit of extra room around them, either put 2 machines in 3U for stacking, or make sure you've got a U of space sitting empty (also handy for storing a copy of the OS installer CD or whatever) Or possibly just go for a 2U case, they're normally much happier when filled with hot things, and much less fussy about that air gap. Or if you decide that you really could do with more disks, more PCI slots, more CPUs or anything else, give me a shout - we recently got some 4U machines, dual CPU, and 1.5 TB of disk (on 200GB HDs) and the case design was superb - didn't sound like a tornado taking off, yet managed to keep all that stuff unbelievably cool. the hatter
Re: rackmount question
Mark Fowler said: An aside issue: Where's this being hosted? Is it going in an Airconed room, and will you be able to get half a U gap between this server and the next one or are you likely to be sandwidtched inbetween two other potentially hot servers? it's actually just going to end up in my bedroom for the forseeable future to be honest, as there's no way i can afford co-lo fees at the moment. the only reason i've got the case (actually got two, but only sorting one out for now) is because it wasn't a bad price and fancied getting one :) Jody
Re: rackmount question
Dirk Koopman said: Personally, unless you can find a really good heatsink *designed* for 1U high operation on AMD (this may involve searching http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ rather carefully) and a power supply which is meaty enough - I think you are looking at Intel Hardware. well both of the heatsinks i mentioned are available from theoverclockingstore.co.uk, and both are included in the skt370 and skt462 sections. overclockers.co.uk only has the akasa one. i'd forgotten about the power supply actually. the one in there at the moment is only 150 watts. what do you think i'll get away with running on that? Jody
Re: rackmount question
On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Jody Belka wrote:
Mark Fowler said:
An aside issue: Where's this being hosted? Is it going in an Airconed
room, and will you be able to get half a U gap between this server and
the next one or are you likely to be sandwidtched inbetween two other
potentially hot servers?
it's actually just going to end up in my bedroom for the forseeable future
to be honest, as there's no way i can afford co-lo fees at the moment. the
only reason i've got the case (actually got two, but only sorting one out
for now) is because it wasn't a bad price and fancied getting one :)
Oddly enough, that's almost exactly the reason I bought 16 of them.
Beware the 'not bad prices'.
S.
--
Shevek
I am the Borg.
sub AUTOLOAD{my$i=$AUTOLOAD;my$x=shift;$i=~s/^.*://;print$x\n;eval
qq{*$AUTOLOAD=sub{my\$x=shift;return unless \$x%$i;{$x}(\$x);};};}
foreach my $i (3..65535) { {'2'}($i); }
Re: rackmount question
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 05:44:43PM -, Jody Belka wrote: ok, i'm trying to decide what exactly to put into my 1U rackmount case and thought i'd ask for some advice as i just can't make a decision. firstly, for reference purposes, this box is going to be to running several vmware virtual machines, so whatever i end up with needs to be able to cope with that. As a general rule, I've found AMD chips need a great deal more cooling than Intel, which is why all my small-case boxes use Intel. Give serious consideration to two lower-speed processors rather than a single extra-grunty one. My last few colo boxes (general purpose servers) have been SMP, and I've found it well worth it. Roger
Re: rackmount question
On Tuesday 14 January 2003 17:58, Mark Fowler wrote: Jody wrote: So, anyone got any advice that could help me make a decision? An aside issue: Where's this being hosted? Is it going in an Airconed room, and will you be able to get half a U gap between this server and the next one or are you likely to be sandwidtched inbetween two other potentially hot servers? To be honest if you don't need the CPU power (why would you?) I'd prefer to get something that ran reliably. It's a major pain in the butt going and sorting out misbehaving co-lo machines. seconded. Unless you are putting this somewhere really expensive and well airconditioned (eg Telecity) then 1U boxes do not pay off in the (cost of box)V(cost of hosting) trade off. add in the less room for extra drives, more expensive PSU's, more heat etc and its a non-starter. Of course if you *are* putting it in Telecity, then you've probably got enough cash to just buy a Intel 1U boxen and a spare anyway. some places (eg mailbox) don't charge differently for a 1U or a 'desktop' sized machine anyway, so you aren't necessarily gaining anyting. -- Robin Szemeti
Re: rackmount question
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 05:44:43PM -, Jody Belka wrote: ok, i'm trying to decide what exactly to put into my 1U rackmount case and thought i'd ask for some advice as i just can't make a decision. Start with a Sparc ATX mobo, or pull a board out of an iMac. /ob_anti-x86_ranting firstly, for reference purposes, this box is going to be to running several vmware virtual machines, so whatever i end up with needs to be able to cope with that. Oh damn. my main problem is trying to decide what processor to use. The fastest you can afford *after* putting in as much RAM as you can afford, a decent disk controller, and decent disks. If you have room in the case, throw in a PC Weasel too before you consider the processor. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david There are many different types of sausages. The best are from the north of England. The wurst are from Germany. -- seen in alt.2eggs.sausage.beans.tomatoes.2toast.largetea.cheerslove
Re: rackmount question
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 06:54:01PM +, robin szemeti wrote: Unless you are putting this somewhere really expensive and well airconditioned (eg Telecity) then 1U boxes do not pay off in the (cost of box)V(cost of hosting) trade off. This hasn't been my experience - I paid about UKP200 more for a 1U case than I would have for a standard desktop, and Black Cat charge UKP15/U/month over the basic cost for anything over 1U. The air conditioning there is good, but not great; I haven't had any heat problems. Roger
Re: rackmount question
Shevek said: Oddly enough, that's almost exactly the reason I bought 16 of them. Beware the 'not bad prices'. well, whether i put an athlonXP 1800+ or a celeron 1.3GHz into it, together with 1gig of ram, i'm talking about £220/£230 for everything but the hard drives, which is not bad. Jody
Re: Potential new module
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 11:53:07AM +, Mark Fowler said: On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Ivor Williams wrote: I was struck with the feeling that boiling down the form data is something that has probably been done many times over - but a search didn't find anything obvious. Would you consider: http://search.cpan.org/author/TJMATHER/HTML-FillInForm-1.01/lib/HTML/FillInForm.pm And webchat (WWW::Chat) and the associated Inline:Webchat do this as well. Simon
