Velocity Reviews - Perl, Oracle, LWP, and PDF's

In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi JD Vernon <jdvernon1976@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm working on a Perl gatekeeper for report requests on an Oracle web
> app
>
> Essentially, the code is:
>
> if (invalid request)
> { burp; }
> else
> { print report; }
>
> print report is the last thing not quite working - everything else is
> great
>
> here's the problem - if the user requests a PDF version of the report,
> if I print "Content-type: application/pdf" before printing the URL,
> they get a popup that says "This page contains both secure and
> non-secure objects...blahblahblah" and it doesn't matter if they
> select Yes or No, the report comes up just fine

For an experiment, try saving the PDF to a file on the server, then in your
request, forget the whole UserAgent stuff. (Comment out the 'use
LWP::UserAgent' and 'use HTTP::Headers;' lines to prove those libraries
aren't used.

Then open the PDF file and send it out. (this would guarantee it has
nothing to do with any "magic" perl is doing in the
"$res->header('Content-type');" bit. You might also just telnet to the
server on port 80 to see if you're given an errant 'Location' header or
something weird like that. (as crazy and unlikey as this sounds, it'd be
nice to rule it out)

If it still gives errors after directly sending out the file, try locating
another PDF some place that doesn't give you the error, or try another
browser.

It could be that the helper application for PDF's triggers the error, could
try setting it to "application/octet-stream" to see if the browser still
chokes on it. (Browser might percieve any type of data that it can't handle
as potentially accessing insecure data, in which case there is very little
you can do about it) I suspect this is the case.

It's probably unlikely, but the browser could be looking at the PDF version
to see if it's capable of using external resources? in that case, you'd
probably have to know about PDF details, perhaps there is an older PDF
standard that doesn't support external linking but still supports your
needs. When you're testing with the "open via file and raw dump to browser"
you could try sending an older PDF to see if that works. (then cross your
fingers you can retrieve the PDF in this older format...)

Are you using a plugin for the PDF or a helper application? If it's a
plugin, try switching to "helper application".

Those are the areas I'd look in, though perhaps not in that order.

Jamie

>
> Thanks
> JDV
>
> use LWP::UserAgent;
> use HTTP::Headers;
>
> $good_url = "https:".$server."ows-bin/rwcgi60.exe?".$in;
> my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $good_url);
>
> if ($rep_format eq 'HTML')
> { $req->header('Content-type' => 'text/html');}
> if ($rep_format eq 'PDF')
> { $req->header('Content-type' => 'application/pdf');}
> if ($rep_format eq 'DELIMITED')
> { $req->header('Content-type' => 'text/plain');}
>
> my $res = $ua->request($req);
> $res->header('Content-type' => $req->header('Content-type'));
>
> if ($res->is_success)
> {
> print 'Content-type: '.$res->header('Content-type');
> print "\n\n";
> print $res->content;
> }
> else
> { print "Error: " . $res->status_line . "\n"; }
>
>

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