On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 4:15 PM, <joe@actionline.com> wrote:

How to get form input results written to a file?

On one of my websites, I use the html "form input" code shown below
for visitors to input their email address to be emailed to me. This
works fine.

What would I need add to this code to get the same submitted
information written to a file in my web hosted space on my web
host's server in addition to having the information sent to me by
email?

<form action=http://www.bluehost.com/bluemail method=POST>
<input type=hidden name=sendtoemail value=joe@vsiq.com>
Please enter your email address:<p>
<input type=text name=mailfrom size=30 maxlength=70>
<input type=submit value=Send>
</form>

It appears you are using bluehost's mailer called BlueMail. This email form help request would be most effective posted to Bluehost's support forums? http://www.bluehostforum.com/archive/index.php/t-432.html

Of course, you can't simply tell it to echo $mailfrom to a file? Not without invoking php or another system call.

I am sure you don't HAVE to use BlueHost's BlueMail CGI; HTML mail forms are pretty fun to write and use, however bluehost might have some peculiar constraints for obvious security reasons?

Basic BlueMail How to:

Log into the cPanel navigate to the CGI center. In the cgi center click on BlueHost.com. On the BlueHost.com page, there is a functional form. Modify the email address listed in the default example to one on your account. After saving this form to a file, and uploading it, test it. Once successful modify to fill needed requirements. Please note the critically important parts are in the first couple lines, and the last few lines of the code for the form. The BlueHost.com page contains additional details about other available fields. Most standard form mail fields are acceptable to use.

Remember Bluemail will only send messages to an email address setup on your Bluehost account. If you wish to deliver the email elsewhere, you may setup an email forwarder instead. OR USE another cgi!

Here's a full well written explanation of using HTML forms: http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML_forms_-_the_basics - You can make some nice tricked out form fields and buttons!

Clearly you should have PHP available, so you can use a nice expanded radio button jazzed up script/form that allows your users to upload a file that's sent with the email, or writes to a file (as you want). James Huggins developed and runs one on a BlueHost (that gives you the option of saving to a file as well as emailing out form field input).

http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/hefs/huggins-email-form-script.htm free

Of course you can also use PERL (which they also have available); just place the scripts into the directory parallel to public_html or in the directory under public_html/cgi-bin (just use whichever is already setup there) and make sure that the script file has executable permissions (755) and then check to see that you have enabled exegCGI in your management portal. You might verify the location of perl with a command line "which perl" if you have ssh access. According to some of the other users on the forums, in order to use server side includes with perl, you will need to specify "#!/ramdisk/bin/perl" as the first line in each script (rather than the #!/usr/bin/perl line). You should be able to test run your scripts via "perl scriptname" (it might give an error as it expects input), to ensure it runs.

#!/ramdisk/bin/perl

# form2file.pl CGI

# Sporked from Various HowTo's

# ActionOnline/2013

# Called from HTML path/filename

use strict;

use CGI qw/:standard/;

use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

# Parse Form Data

# Requires a matching $variable for each of your form input questions

my $mailfrom=param("name");

# For example to add additional entries to be saved from your form:

# my $comment=param("comment");

open(FILE, ">>file.txt") || die "can't write to file.txt $!";

print FILE "$mailfrom\n";

print FILE "\n";

close(FILE);

print header(),

start_html(-title=>'File Created'),

'File created!',

end_html();

# end

NOTE: The most frequent snafu's met with cgi-scripting are PATH based! Try both server side paths ["../cgi-bin/form2file.pl"] and URLs ["http://www.myhost.com/cgi-bin/form2file.pl" since you can't see how the server is setup usually related to server side scripting and security - it's fastest to try. Also watch for permissions and be sure that you can run the scripts locally if you have ssh!

So that will create your file info, but what about email? Surprise!

Using Javascript you can invoke both the perl script-let below and the bluemail tool:

############################Start JavaScript 2 Script Submit###############################

<html>

<head>

<!--

function OnButton1()

{

document.Form1.action = "http://myhost.com/cgi-bin/form2file.pl"

// document.Form1.target = "_blank"; // Open in a new window

document.Form1.submit(); // Submit the page

return true;

}

function OnButton2()

{

document.Form1.action = "http://www.bluehost.com/bluemail"

document.Form1.target = "_blank"; // Open in a new window

document.Form1.submit(); // Submit the page

return true;

}

-->

</script>

</head>

<body>

Please enter your email address:<p>

</form>

</body>

</html>

# End Javascript example

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