On Mon, Nov 12, 2001 at 01:55:13AM -0600, Mark Browne wrote: > I *just* got my first web page filled with data from a MySQL table. > There was a connection through MySQL, PERL, Apache and a browser. > It's still amazes me how a few lines of text on the screen > can put me in such a good mood :-) Congratulations! > Some random notes to other clueless newbies (like myself) > 1) Ya gotta use CPAN to get the perl MySQL-DBI modules installed. > Period. > The machine I am developing on has no LAN connection so I screwed around > downloading the tars and burning them on CD so I could move them to the > laptop. > I could not work out how to install them into perl; a complete waste of > time! > After I rigged up a dialup (another adventure) I had the DBI stuff loaded in > minutes. There are both RPM and .deb packages of the Mysql modules. > 2) I had the most troubles with the connect string. Did you look at the examples in perldoc DBD::mysql? they are all described there: <quote> $dsn = "DBI:$driver:database=$database;host=$hostname;port=$port"; </quote> All of the values have defaults, so you shouldn't have to fill out more than just database=. > 2a) The localhost name thing screwed me up bigtime. Understandable. If it can't get through the socket connection it tries on the network to localhost. > 2b) The database user and password items are another minefield. > They are not necessarily the same as your OS user and login name. > MySQL has it's own user and password control. Yeah, I use a homebrewn script to create users/databases with, so I don't need to remember how to do it every time I need it. You can download it from: http://stderr.net/mysql.txt > 3) I has to comment the "use strict" out to get rid of the compile errors in > the Apache error log. > Still don't know why the "strict" thing is so picky. > Do you have to declare vars in perl under "strict" rules? use strict; #!/usr/bin/perl -wT is your friend when writing cgi-scripts. > 4) The Apache error log is your best friend in sorting why the stuff is not > working. Indeed, but it can be cryptic sometimes. -- Thomas Eibner <http://thomas.eibner.dk/> DnsZone <http://dnszone.org/> mod_pointer <http://stderr.net/mod_pointer>