WWW-APPN -- Application Web Server

[New Application no longer accepted]

This is the Application Web Server of School of Computing, NUS.
It provides web-based applications for the School. Perl and PHP scripts are supported.

Most of the applications here are on-going final-yr student projects which require the use of CGI. If you are doing a SoC final-yr (or similar) student project which requires the use of CGI, you may request for the use of this web server. Please submit a Helpdesk e-form. In the form, select "CGI:UNIX" as the "Resource Required".

This web server does not cater for personal homepages.
Please do not request to use this web server for running your own CGI programs in your personal homepage.

Instructions for Application Developers

1. Where should you put your HTML, CGI, and other files?

2. What is the URL for your homepage?

3. What is the local directory pathname to your homepage?

4. What filename should you give to your CGI programs?

5. What type of CGI programs can you use?

6. What file permission must you give on your files?

7. How to override the default web server directives with your own?

8. Where can you read the error_log file to debug your CGI program?

9. How to program your CGI using Oracle and DBI in perl?

10. Why some browsers are denied from accessing your webpage?

11. How to allow web browsers outside SoC to access your webpage?

12. Notes on using server-side include.

public_html

The Application Web Server can only see the files which are located under your public_html directory and not anywhere else.

Note: If you are using the same public_html directory for your personal homepage, then in order to eliminate conflicts between the two purposes, you are advised to create a subdirectory further down (e.g. public_html/myproject) and use this subdirectory solely for the purpose of your CGI project.

You are encouraged to sub-divide your public_html directory further into various subdirectories and organise your files into the respective subdirectories according to their functionality. For example, you can create a subdirectory

public_html/cgi-bin

public_html/data

You can put your CGI programs anywhere under your public_html directory tree. You can scatter them into various subdirectories, and you can name the subdirectories any name you like.

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http://www-appn.comp.nus.edu.sg/~username
or

https://www-appn.comp.nus.edu.sg/~username

(where username is the username of your project account)

which is mapped to your public_html directory.

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/home/stuproj/~username/public_html/subdir/.../filename

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.cgi

For example, if you want to use a perl script which you had originally named as

login.pl

login.cgi

If you wish to retain the original filename suffix, you can achieve this by overriding the web server's configuration with your own configuration via the use of the AddHandler directive in your per-directory AccessConfig file (typically named .htaccess). See the "How to override the default web server directives with your own?" section below for more details.

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1. Perl scripts

   Use the following as the first line of your Perl scripts:

   #! /usr/local/bin/perl

   To make the task of writing your CGI programs easier, you can also use the CGI.pm perl module in your Perl scripts:

   use CGI;

   To learn how to use CGI.pm, get the book Official Guide to Programming with CGI.pm written by Lincoln D. Stein.

   You can also make use of the DBI perl module:

   use DBI;

   For an example of using DBI with Oracle, see the section How to program your CGI using Oracle and DBI in Perl? below.

2. Shell scripts

   You can use sh, ksh, bash, csh, tcsh.
   They are all located under /bin.
   For example,

   #! /bin/sh

3. Compiled binaries for SUN Sparc Solaris platform

   Your program must be compiled on a hardware/software platform which is compatible with the one used by this web server.

4. Java programs

   You have to write a shell script as a wrapper to invoke your actual java programs. In this wrapper shell script, set up your java environment (e.g. CLASSPATH) accordingly.

   Our JDK programs are located under

   /usr/local/bin/java/jdk/

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1. Directories which store web documents, e.g. public_html

   World-readable-and-executable is required:

   drwxr-xr-x

2. Web documents, e.g. index.html

   World-readable is required:

   -rw-r--r--

3. CGI programs, e.g. login.cgi

   Only owner-readable-and-executable is required.
   World-permissions are not required, because the web server will your CGI program in your identity.

   -rwx------

4. Data directories used by your CGI program, e.g. public_html/archive

   Only owner-permissions are required.
   World-permissions are not required, because the web server will your CGI program in your identity.

   drwx------

5. Data files used by your CGI program, e.g. public_html/database/members.dat

   Only owner-permissions are required.
   World-permissions are not required, because the web server will your CGI program in your identity.

   -rw-------

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.htaccess

Inside this file, you can specify any configuration directives which like to override.

For example, if you want the web server to recognise files with filename suffix .pl to be CGI program, you can specify:

AddHandler cgi-script .pl

AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml

Note: See Notes on using server-side include below.

Order deny,allow
Allow from all

Options -ExecCGI -Includes

For the list of directives which you can use, refer to the online Apache documentation under Run-time configuration directives.

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http://www-appn.comp.nus.edu.sg/cgi-bin/errlog

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9. How to program your CGI using Oracle and DBI in Perl?

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use DBI;

$ENV{'ORACLE_HOME'} = '/opt/oracle';
$drh = DBI->install_driver('Oracle');
$dbh = $drh->connect('sid3.comp.nus.edu.sg', '', '');

$sh = $dbh->prepare("select table_name from user_tables");
$sh->execute;
($table_name) = $sh->fetchrow(); 

print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n";
print "OK!!!!\n\n";
print "$table_name $a\n\n";
print "OK!!!!\n\n";
$a=1;

$sh->finish;

$dbh->disconnect;

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10. Why some browsers are denied from accessing your webpage?

Even when someone uses a web browser from within the SoC network, the web browser may have configured to go through a proxy server (e.g. the NUS Proxy Server) which is located outside the SoC network.
In this case, the web browser should be configured to bypass the proxy server for accessing destinations which are located within the NUS network.

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11. How to allow web browsers outside SoC to access your webpage?

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12. Notes on using server-side include.

<!--#exec cmd="myprog">

The following example will not work because the command to be executed, /bin/who, is not owned by you and does not reside within your public_html directory:

<!--#exec cmd="/bin/who">

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