Using Perl on an AS/400 / iSeries

Transcript Using Perl on an AS/400 / iSeries

Using Perl on an AS/400 / iSeries
Presented by David Mount
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Owner of Texas400 Computer Consulting
See www.texas400.com for more on Perl on the
iSeries / AS400
Reasons to Pay Attention
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You may actually want to provide the public or
your users with internet access to some of your
data – PERL is an easy and FREE way to do
this
PERL is a great way to learn about CGI
programming as well at HTML and HTTP
server
Someday, you may have the chance to port a
PERL application to your iSeries
Typical Computer User’s
Understanding of AS/400 / iSeries
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What’s an AS/400? What’s an iSeries?
Old architecture that uses green screens
Programs written in RPG
Runs applications written 10 to 15 years ago
Doesn’t belong in the same sentence as “internet”
Upload data via PC Support or Client Access
Really different from world of PC’s and internet
Isolated from rest of world
We have the opportunity to educate
the IT public about AS400 / iSeries
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Internet Accessible – Free Telnet products
(www.symtrax.com)
Uploads and Downloads over internet with FTP
Internet remote printing to IP addressable
printers
SMTP Server – Send emails
HTTP Server – web hosting
Various CGI programming capabilities
Career questions to keep you
awake at night
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What programming language should I be
learning?
What computer platform will be in use in 5 to
10 years?
What can I learn today that will still be valuable
in 5 to 10 years?
Answer to these questions is:
The Internet
The Internet
The Internet
TCP-IP issues are the same
regardless of the platform
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Once you configure FTP Server on AS/400,
you already know how to do it on Windows
The FTP client on OS/400 is operationally very
similar to the FTP on windows and Linux
Getting the SMTP server working involves
learning about DNS, mail forwarding, third
party relay
Roadmap of next 25 slides
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Write a “Welcome to my page” static HTML page
Use PERL to output “Hello World” to browser
Write an HTML form to accept PERMIT#
Write a PERL program to process the CGI data, lookup
the permit inspections and write to browser
Use a link to look up specific info about an inspection
Read a non-keyed file and write it to the browser
Non platform specific things to
know for web site programming
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HTML formatting
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Static HTML
Forms with fields
Links with Query Strings
How to FTP HTML to web server
Web server configuration
Default folder, CGI-BIN directory
Http Server Directives for Static
HTML
So that a browser going to my AS/400 will be served the
HTML in “index.html” in the “html” folder (get there with
WRKLNK), use these two directives:
Pass /* /html/*
Welcome index.html
There is nothing magic about the HTML folder. I created it
from the WRKLNK screen
To make a “Welcome” page
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Use a PC to create a document named “index.html”
with the following:
<html><body>Welcome to my home
page</body></html>
Use FTP to put that document in the HTML folder
Specifically, connect to 66.12.223.253 with remote
directory of /html
Use a browser to go to 66.12.223.253 and you should
see the Welcome page
Download and Install PERL
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PERL (Practical Extraction and Report Language)
An interpretted language (don’t compile)
Written in C as a quick and dirty language
Used by Unix administrators for years
Probably the most common CGI programming
language
www.cpan.org/ports/ to download the free library
PERL Resources
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Vast supplies of sample code on the internet
Many Perl and CGI / PERL books
“Writing CGI Applications with PERL” by Kevin
Meltzer and Brent Michalski
PERL Executable Code
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I used WRKLNK and MD PERL commands to
create a directory named PERL
I FTP my PERL documents to the PERL
directory
Hello World Program
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Use notepad to create a document named Hello.PL
#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI qw/:standard/;
print header;
print '<html><body>';
print 'Hello World';
print '</body></html>';
FTP document to AS/400
Configure HTTP Server for CGI
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Enable
GET
Enable
HEAD
Enable
POST
EXEC /cgi-bin/* /QSYS.LIB/T40CGI.LIB/*.PGM
%%EBCDIC%%
CL Program
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Compile a CL program named HELLO
CALL
PGM(PERLDIST/PERL) +
PARM('/PERL/HELLO.PL')
Program must be where you told the HTTP server that
CGI-BIN programs are. In my case, the library T40CGI
Make sure QTMHHTTP and QTMHHTP1 have authority
to everything
Program execution time!
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When browser goes to
66.12.223.253/cgi-bin/hello
The HTTP server maps anything coming to “cgi-bin”
to T40CGI library
So, HTTP server tries to run the program HELLO
from T40CGI library
What is CGI?
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Common Gateway Interface
A defined standard for executing programs with
parameters
Conceptually similar to a DDS display file
Invoke a CGI program with either a link from a web
page or a submit button on a form
Data arrives as a string of field names and values:
gtpermit.pgm?PERMT=1234&USR=David
Different ways to process CGI
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RPG ILE program using IBM supplied API’s
(see Brad Stones’s eRPG book)
IBM’s Easy400 tool
(see www-922.ibm.com)
3rd Party Products like ProGen WebSmart
PERL
CGI form with submit button
--- named GTPERMIT.HTML
<html><body>
<FORM METHOD="POST“
ACTION="http://66.12.223.253/cgi-bin/gtpermit">
Permit#
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="PERMT“
Maxlength=4><p>
<INPUT TYPE="Submit" VALUE="Submit“>
</form></body></html>
Program Execution Time!
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When submit button is clicked:
String “66.12.223.253/cgi-bin/gtpermit?PERMT=1234”
Goes to IP address 66.12.223.253
The HTTP server maps anything coming to “cgi-bin” to T40CGI
library
So, HTTP server tries to run the program GTPERMIT with the
query string of ?PERMT=1234
We need a program named GTPERMIT to read this value and
respond
Use SQL to read AS/400 database
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Need to read value from CGI form
and then…
Build the SQL string:
SELECT * FROM T40CGI/INS WHERE
INSPMT = ‘1234’
and then…
Show the data
Put new Perl program on AS400
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FTP this Perl program named “gtpermt” to the
AS/400
Create a CL to run it
Make sure the database and the CL program
are usable by QTMHTTP and QTMMHTP1
Click on the submit button
Add a link to see details of
inspection
Add this line as the last column of table:
 print q(<td><a href=showdetl?PERMT=
$data->{INSPMT}&TYP=$data->{INSTYP}
>Details</a></td>\n);
Builds a string like:
<a href=showdetl?PERMT=1234&TYP=DW>
Details</a>
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Perl Program named showdetl.pl
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Get parms from query string
Build the SQL string:
SELECT * FROM T40CGI/INS WHERE
INSPMT = ‘1234’ AND INSTYP = ‘DW’
and then…
Show the data
Put new program on AS/400
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FTP this Perl program named “showdetl” to the
AS/400
Create a CL to run it
Make sure the CL program is usable by
QTMHTTP and QTMMHTP1
At Your Next Company Meeting
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Can users use the internet to get on the
iSeries?
Can people upload and download data from
the AS400 over the internet?
Can our computer host web pages?
Can we process CGI input?
Can we run PERL?
Duh!!!!
It’s an AS/400!

Using Perl on an AS/400 / iSeries

Transcript Using Perl on an AS/400 / iSeries

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