help with this counter, please...

F.N.G.

02-03-2003, 12:17 PM

Hi,

I'm new to cgi, and am getting no results with a counter-script that I found in this very forum: "" (http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=11826&highlight=counter)

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

$tempcount = 0;

while($tempcount < 8)
{
$tempcount++;
if(-e "lock/myfile.lok")
{
sleep 2;
}
else
{
open (LOCK,">>lock/myfile.lok");
close LOCK;
open (COUNTER,"<counter.fil");
$count = <COUNTER>;
close COUNTER;
$count++;
open (COUNTER,">counter.fil");
print COUNTER ($count);
close COUNTER;
unlink "lock/myfile.lok";
last;
}
}

------------------------------------------
HERE IS MY TEST PAGE:

<html><head><title>_</title></head>
<body style="background:#ffffff;
font-face:arial;
font-size:10px;
color:#cccccc">

<div style="position:absolute;top:2px;left:5px">
count = 
</div>

<center>
<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
T E S T . . .
</center>
</body></html>

THESE ARE THE INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE SERVER:
------------------------------------------------------

To use cgi, create a cgi-bin in your home directory. Upload
.cgi and .pl files into that folder. Remember that they must
be made executable before they will work.

Some cgi\'s need a full path name to work. Add /home/username
to the path name.

perl version 5 = /usr/local/bin/perl

-----------------------------------------------------

THIS IS WHAT i HAVE IN THE CGI-BIN:
-----------------------------------------------------
counter.cgi (chmod-755) & counter.fil (chmod-777)

-----------------------------------------------------
Nothing is happening with the counter... the page displays ' count = (nothing) ' rather than ' count = # '

If anyone can see what I am doing wrong, please let me know.

Philip M

02-03-2003, 07:11 PM

The same counter works fine for me!

Your HTML should be something like:-

<p align="center">You are visitor number  to this web site</p>

This will return the counter value at the appropriate point.

F.N.G.

02-04-2003, 12:17 AM

Thanks for the suggestion.

It didn't actually work for me, though.

I don't believe the tags & text surrounding the cgi-reference within the html document have any effect on the cgi script itself, so just changing them did nothing.

There must be some other problem here. :confused:

Philip M

02-04-2003, 07:58 PM

I tried to test your script, and as you say it does not work. It is unclear why - possibly there are some unwanted invisible characters in it. Even spaces after the last } can cause problems. And #!usr/bin/perl must be the very, very first line with no blank lines ahead of it.

The following DOES work - I have just tested it.

Make sure that the counter.cgi is CHMOD 755 and counter.fil is CHMOD 777, and in the same directory. Also make sure you have a sub-directory in the cgi-bin called "lock" and that this directory is CHMOD 777.

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

$tempcount = 0;

while($tempcount < 8)
{
$tempcount++;
if(-e "lock/myfile.lok")
{
sleep 2;
}
else
{
open (LOCK,">>lock/myfile.lok");
close LOCK;
open (COUNTER,"<counter.fil");
$count = <COUNTER>;
close COUNTER;
$count++;
open (COUNTER,">counter.fil");
print COUNTER ($count);
close COUNTER;
unlink "lock/myfile.lok";
print $count;
last;
}
}

Try pasting this and uploading it to your own cgi bin. Do not select anything before the first (#) or after the final character (}).

Best of luck! But this simple script ought not to give headaches!

F.N.G.

02-05-2003, 03:53 AM

Thanks, I'll give that a try...

F.N.G.

02-05-2003, 08:15 AM

It worked; thank very much for your help.

(I was also unaware that the document needed to be given a ".shtml" extension... is that a universal truth, or server specific?)

pb&j

02-05-2003, 03:43 PM

Many servers require the shtml extension on pages if it contains an SSI command. Some others are more relaxed and allow other extensions to be parsed. If you have the ability to use your own ".htaccess" file, then you can also change the ability over to html extensions.

F.N.G.

02-05-2003, 05:56 PM

Ok, thanks.