Project 1

CS 318

75 points, due Feb. 21, 2000

For this project, you will be designing an HTML form and a CGI Perl program. Traditionally, finger is used to discover information about a user on a Unix system. Here's an example: 

phoenix:~
* finger ashao
Login: ashao                            Name: Aaron G. Shao
Directory: /home1/ashao                 Shell: /bin/tcsh
Last login Tue Feb  8 09:42 (EST) on ttyp2 from 4.17.88.225
No Plan.

phoenix:~
* finger maria
Login: mlakin                           Name: Maria Lakin
Directory: /home1/mlakin                Shell: /bin/tcsh
Never logged in.
No Plan.

Login: mperez                           Name: Maria Perez
Directory: /home1/mperez                Shell: /usr/local/shells/noshell
Never logged in.
No Plan.

phoenix:~
* finger kelliher
Login: kelliher                         Name: Thomas P. Kelliher
Directory: /home1/kelliher              Shell: /bin/tcsh
Office: Hoffberger 140, (410) 337-6189  Home Phone: (410) 931-2946
On since Fri Feb 11 06:57 (EST) on ttyp1 (messages off)
    from phoenix.goucher.edu:10.0
Mail forwarded to: Send mail to kelliher AT DOMAIN bluebird.goucher.edu
Plan:
Office
Address: Thomas P. Kelliher
         Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
...
<Edited for brevity.>
...
              Th   9:00am--10:00am

           or by appointment

Login: tom                              Name: Tom Kelliher
Directory: /home1/tom                   Shell: /bin/tcsh
Never logged in.
Mail forwarded to: Send mail to kelliher AT DOMAIN phoenix.goucher.edu
No Plan.

Login: tomstu                           Name: Thomas P. Kelliher
Directory: /home1/tomstu                Shell: /bin/tcsh
Never logged in.
No Plan.

phoenix:~
*

In the first example, we search for a user based on their username. In the second example, we search for a user based on part of their real name in the GECOS field. Note that more than one record matched. The third example demonstrates two things: A match is searched for in both the username and GECOS field, and the finger program will print the contents of the .project and .plan files in the user's home directory if they are present and readable. (Finger Adam Badik to see an example of the .project file in use.)

Location and Format of the Password File

The password file's path is /etc/passwd. Here's an example record: 

kelliher:*:100:200:Thomas P. Kelliher,Hoffberger 140,(410) 337-6189,(410)
931-2946:/home1/kelliher:/bin/tcsh
(The actual record is a single line.) The field names of the colon-delimited records are as follows: 
name:password:uid:gid:gecos:home_dir:shell
The name field is the user name. The ``*'' is a dummy password. The actual password is kept in a more secure location. Note that GECOS is, itself, a comma-delimited field with this format: 
name,office,work_phone,home_phone
The name field is the real name.

Input

Design an HTML form by hand to read the name for which to search. The query should be submitted using the POST method. The form's action should be to run your CGI program.

Output

Your CGI Perl program should search the password file and for each match of either the user name or real name produce output in this form: 

Login: ashao                            Name: Aaron G. Shao
Directory: /home1/ashao                 Shell: /bin/tcsh
<No line or office, office phone, and home phone info as above.>
<No line or contents of the .project file.>
<"No Plan." or contents of the .plan file.>
The information on the first two lines should be separated horizontally by using an HTML table. Adjacent records should be separated by a horizontal rule. If no password file record matches the search term, an appropriate error message should be returned. Under no circumstances should the contents of the entire password file be returned. You'll need to perform some devious thinking to determine a set of tests for this.

Evaluation Criteria

The following will be taken into consideration in evaluating your work:

  1. The design of your solution.

  2. The generality of your solution.

  3. Attention to detail. E.g., detecting pathological conditions and doing the ``right'' thing.

  4. Completeness of testing (of course, you need to provide evidence of testing). The easiest way to do this is to turn in a document describing your test cases and the results of the tests.

  5. The readability of your code.

  6. The degree of assistance required from me.

Submitting Your Project

Remember that you need to inform me as soon as you place any executable programs in your cgi-bin directory. To submit your project, turn in hard-copy of the HTML and Perl. Write the path to the files on the first sheets. Your project is due at the beginning of class on the 21st. You must not modify any of your project files after the due date and time until I give you a ``go ahead'' signal. See the syllabus for the late policy.


Thomas P. Kelliher
Fri Feb 11 08:33:37 EST 2000
Tom Kelliher