add counter to a form

Nico posted this at 11:47 — 29th November 2000.

Joined: Feb 1999

Hello!
Got a question..
Is there a way to add an invisible counter to a form (like the alien form = af.cgi) so every time a user sends an email thru a form, it saves the quantity in a .log file and then the webmaster can check how many users sent that information.

Thanks

Nicolas Escobar J.
http://www.developy.com
Free resources for webmasters in spanish

japhy posted this at 14:56 — 29th November 2000.

They have: 161 posts

Joined: Dec 1999

There's no need to use the form to do it, just modify the program to increment a counter file every time the program is accessed (successfully, mind you -- do this after any error checking you need done).

use POSIX qw( O_RDWR O_CREAT LOCK_EX );

$counter = "/path/to/counter.txt";

sysopen COUNTER, $counter, O_RDWR|O_CREAT or die "can't read/write $counter: $!";
flock COUNTER, LOCK_EX or die "can't flock: $!";
chomp (my $n = <COUNTER> || 0);
seek COUNTER, 0, 0 or die "can't rewind: $!";
print COUNTER ++$n or die "can't print: $!";
truncate COUNTER or die "can't truncate: $!";
close COUNTER or die "can't close: $!"

Nico posted this at 16:20 — 29th November 2000.

They have: 96 posts

Joined: Feb 1999

Tks japhy
but I just added that code to the script and an error ocurred.

This is the script I am using

http://www.cgi.tj/scripts/alienform/af.txt

Thanks again,

Nicolas Escobar J.
http://www.developy.com
Free resources for webmasters in spanish

japhy posted this at 16:32 — 29th November 2000.

They have: 161 posts

Joined: Dec 1999

I'm sorry, there were syntax errors is the code I provided. I should have tried running it before pawning it off as working code.

use Fcntl qw( O_RDWR O_CREAT LOCK_EX );

$counter = "counter.txt";

sysopen COUNTER, $counter, O_RDWR|O_CREAT or die "can't read/write $counter: $!$
flock COUNTER, LOCK_EX or die "can't flock: $!";
chomp (my $n = <COUNTER> || 0);
seek COUNTER, 0, 0 or die "can't rewind: $!";
print COUNTER ++$n or die "can't print: $!";
truncate COUNTER, tell COUNTER or die "can't truncate: $!";
close COUNTER or die "can't close: $!";

This code works for me. And you might want to include the CGI::Carp module in your program, so that if this die()s, you'll be alerted:

use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';