Executing a cgi in the results

Post by **Thunderstone** » Tue Aug 19, 1997 11:26 am

We have banner ads displayed through a cgi on our site.

Unfortunately, our web server won't allow server-side-includes to be run
through CGIs.

I was wondering if there was any way to get the script to run the cgi and
return the output (which is html) on the search results page.

Thanks,

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| Brock Rozen | brozen@webdreams.com | http://www.webdreams.com/~brozen |
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Post by **Thunderstone** » Tue Aug 19, 1997 11:59 am

You can <EXEC> the ad script from the Vortex search script, but it
will run in a normal, not CGI, environment, so it may not work properly
unless the ad script knows this or its output is parsed by the search
script. (See http://www.thunderstone.com/vortexman/node32.html for more
on <EXEC>.)

A better solution would be to generate the ads with the Vortex search
script itself if possible, to save the overhead of running yet another
CGI program. Perhaps a <randpick> from a variable list of possible ads.

-Kai

Kai Getrost | Thunderstone Software - EPI, Inc.
kai@thunderstone.com | info@thunderstone.com

Post by **Thunderstone** » Tue Aug 19, 1997 2:28 pm

On Tue, 19 Aug 1997, Kai Getrost wrote:

Well, I tried this yesterday before posting the question, and it doesn't
return anything. Any ideas?

<exec NOBR /torah/httpd_torah/cgi/torah/banner/display1.cgi> </EXEC>
<spew $ret>

When run directly, the program will return something like this, which
leads me to believe it doesn't need the CGI environment.

Content-type: text/html

<ad>
<center>

<a href="http://www.torah.org/cgi-bin/torah/bann ... tp://www.t
target="_top">Image reading2.jpg</a> 
<a href="http://www.torah.org/cgi-bin/torah/bann ... tp://www.t
target="_top">If Yes, Click Here!</a> 

</center>
</ad>

Not in this case, unfortunately. Our banner program keeps statistics and
we'd still like that available.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Brock Rozen | brozen@webdreams.com | http://www.webdreams.com/~brozen |
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Post by **Thunderstone** » Tue Aug 19, 1997 2:45 pm

<spew> expects a _filename_. Use <send> instead. See
http://www.thunderstone.com/vortexman/node83.html.

It may not need a CGI environment, but it still seems to expect one,
since it's sending headers even in a non-CGI environment. You'll need
to strip them off the <EXEC> return value or they'll appear in the
output. Use <sandr>.

-Kai

Kai Getrost | Thunderstone Software - EPI, Inc.
kai@thunderstone.com | info@thunderstone.com

Post by **Thunderstone** » Tue Aug 19, 1997 2:59 pm

On Tue, 19 Aug 1997, Kai Getrost wrote:

With <sandr> it all works perfectly now.

Thanks for all your help -- your suggestion did it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Brock Rozen | brozen@webdreams.com | http://www.webdreams.com/~brozen |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------