Perl: How to do a foreach for elements in a database?

donnied · 07-15-2009, 09:38 AM

For Perl I need to understand a few things. It's unlikely that anyone will be able to give me direct answers but if they could point out where to look that would be _very_ helpful.

I'm trying to hack down an existing script http://eoylpac.org/source/eoy.pl.
What I need to be able to do (in a nut shell):
1. Open a database
2. Read the values for each uniq id and execute a subroutine for each of those values.
(The subroutine already exists in the above file 'do_pdf').

Telemachos · 07-15-2009, 04:17 PM

If you don't know Perl at all, then the first thing you need to do is learn the basics of it. Take a look at either Learning Perl or Beginning Perl, and spend a weekend on that. Beginning Perl even has a chapter on the basics of working with databases using Perl. (It generally means using the DBI module.)

PMP · 07-16-2009, 02:04 AM

Check out this link http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/10/DBI.html

chrism01 · 07-16-2009, 02:18 AM

See also

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=Tutorials
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=284436
http://search.cpan.org/~timb/DBI-1.609/DBI.pm

donnied · 07-16-2009, 03:28 PM

Unfortunately, I don't really have the time to do a good job of learning Perl at this moment. I have hobbled together a script with DBI:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
        use DBI;
        use PDF::Create;
        use CGI::Carp qw( fatalsToBrowser );
        use CGI qw( :standard );

        my $db = 'test';
        my $host = 'test-mysql';
        my $db_user = '';
        my $db_password = '';
        my $cid = 1;
        $dbh = DBI -> connect ( "dbi:mysql:$db:$host", "$db_user", "$db_password",
                        { RaiseError => 1, AutoCommit => 0});

        $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT id FROM don_eoy");
        $sth->execute( );

        while ( @row = $sth->fetchrow_array() ) {
        &do_pdf( $row[0] );
        print( $row[0] );
        }



sub do_pdf

The sub do_pdf routine is too long to post. It seems to work but it's streaming and not creating the individual pdfs. I can redirect the output to a file which contains all the various pdfs in one file (which is problematic).

The code should produce output files. As it was (a response to a click on a webpage) it produced the individual files, but now in my attempt to create a script which bulk creates pdfs it does not.
pertinent snippet:

Code:

use PDF::Create;
        my $file_name = qq{$student_last_name\_$student_first_name.pdf};

        print header(   -type => 'application/x-pdf',
                                -attachment => $file_name );

        my $pdf = new PDF::Create(      'filename'      => '-', # Stdout
                                                        'Version'       => 1.2,
                                                        'PageMode'      => 'UseOutlines',
                                                        'Author'        => 'Don ',
                                                        'Title' => 'Some Title',

donnied · 07-17-2009, 02:07 PM

My problem was:

Code:

my $pdf = new PDF::Create(      'filename'      => '-',

which sent everything to stdout. What I needed was:

Code:

 my $file_name = qq{$student_last_name\_$student_first_name.pdf};
 print header(   -type => 'application/x-pdf',
                  -attachment => $file_name );

my $pdf = new PDF::Create(      'filename'      => $file_name,
                                                        'Version'       => 1.2,
                                                        'PageMode'      => 'UseOutlines',
                                                                                                        );