CGIemail

Because CGI scripts are a potential security risk, web.mit.edu maintainers do not allow the MIT community to invoke scripts through its web interface. The only exception is CGIemail, which will collect input from an HTML form and email a specified email address. For implementation examples, see the quickstart notes for Surveys and Polls using cgiemail. For advanced users the cgiemail home page is great resource for finding out more about the cgiemail script in use on the MIT servers. Here you can find information on downloading and installing the script on your own server and get complete instructions for using the software.

The following perl scripts are helpful tools that can help you in the setup phase as well as the data collection phase if you have access to Athena.

Translateform.pl
Translateform.pl is a perl script that will take an html form page and generate the text file necessary to work with cgiemail. To use translateform, simply connect securely to athena, and enter the two following commands, editing the two file names in the second command appropriately:

add cwis
translateform foo.html bar.txt

Foo.html refers to your html file which contains the form and bar.txt is the filename you've designated for the text file that will list the fields from the form in the emails that get generated from the form. It is important to note that translateform currently does not prompt for recipient (that's you) email addresses, so these will need to be added by hand in the resulting text file before it can be used by cgiemail.

More information on the translateform script can be found in the Creating Web Pages - FAQ sect ion.

Process-comments.pl
Once you have collected the email responses to your web page form, you may want to convert them into a text file which is properly formatted for easy import into a database like Filemaker Pro.

1. To use process-comments.pl you must first get a copy of the script. To do this, connect securely to athena, navigate to your desired directory, and enter the following command, on a single line, separated by spaces:
   
   add cwis; cp /mit/cwis/process/process-comments.pl process-comments.pl
   
   This will put a copy of the script in whatever directory you are currently located.
   
   
2. Next, Upload the Eudora folder where you have stored the email form responses. Upload the messages as a text document to same directory where you have copied process-comments.
   
   
3. At the athena prompt, type:
   
   process-comments.pl file.txt
   
   Substitute for file.txt whatever you have named the uploaded file of email messages.
   
   
4. The script will generate a tab-delimited text file named process.out. Download process.out in ascii format to your local computer.
   
   
5. Import process.out into your database, mapping your fields appropriately.
   

More information on the process-comments script can be found in the Creating Web Pages - FAQ section.