Redirecting CGI#out to a string

zyzygy · Jan 5, 2006

Hi All

For my first "production" ruby app, I'm writing a self contained web
interface to the TSM backup product, based on some existing, awful,
perl code. I'm using webrick because the number of requests will be
small, and I want it cross platform and as self-contained as possible.

I'd prefer to generate my html using the CGI class, but webrick needs a
string to be returned and CGI#out writes to standard output.

I've played with redirecting $stdout to a StringIO object, but haven't
been able to get that to work, and also that doesn't seem to be the
Ruby way, its more Perl-ish.

Can some kind soul please point me in the right direction?

TIA

Steve.

AIX and TSM Administrator
Brisbane Australia

Ross Bamford · Jan 5, 2006

I'd prefer to generate my html using the CGI class, but webrick needs a
string to be returned and CGI#out writes to standard output.

I've not used CGI much myself, but a quick experiment yielded this:

require 'cgi'

cgi = CGI.new('html4')
html = cgi.html do
cgi.body do
cgi.pre do
"Don't use 'out'"
end
end
end

# Now you can do what you want with it, for example:
puts CGI.pretty(html.gsub(/<([^!][^>]*)>/) { "<#{$1.downcase}>" })

Outputs:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<body>
<pre>
Don't use 'out'
</pre>
</body>
</html>

I don't know if it's the best tool for your task, but anyway I hope that
helps...

redirecting stdout to a String	3	Mar 24, 2006
redirect errors to browser in ruby + cgi	9	Apr 23, 2006
FAQ 9.16 How do I decode a CGI form?	0	Mar 8, 2011
How to pass/return a string to calling program?	6	Oct 21, 2010
How to transfer a string from cgi at server side to a javascriptfunction at client side as an argume	0	Oct 12, 2009
How to redirect $stdin to read from a string?	2	Jun 8, 2008
Monkey patching class String to add bitwise operators	2	Feb 23, 2011
Redirecting STDOUT to Scalar behaves not as expected. Why?	4	Nov 27, 2004

Redirecting CGI#out to a string

zyzygy

Ross Bamford

Ask a Question

Similar Threads

Members online

Forum statistics

Latest Threads