[gopher] Re: Trouble with ASK form

[Cameron Kaiser <spectre@floodgap.com>]

> To experiment with ASK forms, I've put in my gopherspace root:
> 
> 1. hello - a shell script that echoes "Hello, World!". World
>    readable and executable. Works as expected when invoked from 
>    command line.
> 
> 2. hello.ask - form with dummy Nore: and Ask: lines. World 
>    readable.
> 
> When I pick the selector in gopher, the ASK form works fine, but 
> I get a panel with the following error after submitting the 
> form:
> 
> > Gopher Transmission Error
> > ---------------------------------
> > 1 Stephen Jones <smj@SDF>
> >  Cannot write ask data to '(null)' 
> 
> What's wrong?

This might be a server problem. I don't notice anything obviously
incorrect about the ASK form itself.

> A separate question: Is it possible to make a gopher link, 
> without an ASK form, that executes a script or program and 
> returns the result to the client?

Yes, though how you do that depends on the server. However, most gopherds
support this. The mole method also allows you to build a search server this
way using item type 7, which bucktooth and pygopherd both support (I haven't
looked at UMN in a long time, so I don't remember if this is possible, but
I believe so using exec:).

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  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser@floodgap.com
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