Perl CGI on IIS form POST returns 404

Question

I am using a home grown small CGI Router for a simple webapp, code can be found here on github

The webapp has a login form like this

my $form = start_form( -method => 'post', -action => '/login' );

    $form .= p( label('Mail'), textfield( -name => 'mail' ) );
    $form .= p( label('Mail'), password_field( -name => 'pass' ) );
    $form .= p( submit( -value => 'Log ind', -class => 'button button-primary' ) );

    $form .= end_form();

and I have a router handling the post request like this

$router->add_route( 'POST', '/login', sub {

  if ( param ) {
    # Get mail and pass
    my $mail = $cgi->param( 'mail' );
    my $pass = $cgi->param( 'password' );

    # Check against user table
    # Set cookie and redirect to admin
  }

  # Otherwise redirect to /login
  print redirect( -url => '/login' );
});

on my local environment, osx 10.10.3, perl 5, version 18, subversion 2 (v5.18.2), this is working like expected, I submit the form and handle the login, no problem.

my production environment is a Microsoft-IIS/5.0 according to ENV{'SERVER_SOFTWARE'}

On the production environment is returning a 404 and unfortunately I am unable to get my hands on any log file that could reveal something useful.

.htaccess file on both production and local environment

# RewriteBase /
DirectoryIndex index.pl index.phtml index.html

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.pl [L,QSA]

leejo leejo · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-24T07:43:49

The problem is most likely down to differing environments, check not just the server software but also the versions of perl and versions of the CGI.pm module. Also worth noting is that IIS can cause problems with CGI.pm due to the whole NPH thing - check the POD for CGI.pm for more details.

With regards to CGIRouter:

Out of the box CGI qw/:standard/ offers many of the features you would expect from a web framework, it has methods for creating HTML markup like anchors, paragraphs and H tags. CGI may not be as sexy as some of the modern frameworks.

It's not that CGI.pm isn't "sexy", it's simply not fit for purpose in any modern web app. Not to mention that the HTML markup functions are considered deprecated and shouldn't be used

adding a framework, any framework, would mean adding modules and dependencies which would then have to be kept up to date, as well as spending time on understanding the framework in question, it's cons and pros in order to pick the best one suited for the task at hand.

This is also a none-argument. CGI.pm has been removed from the perl core as of 5.22 so you will need to install it and its dependencies pretty soon. If you want to write a trivial RESTful web service using a simple to use framework with minimal dependencies then look at Mojolicious::Lite. For more examples and other alternatives see CGI::Alternatives.

Perl CGI on IIS form POST returns 404

2 Answers