Upgrading my guestbook using cgi

Hi there, I got a guest book that I did in cgi and I was wondering if I could do something like what they refer to as a zebra stripe, the first post has a background color of grey and then the next post has a background color of light green or something, and so on. Here is my guestbook code currently:


#!/usr/bin/perl
#project3.cgi - saves form data to a file, and creates
#a guestbook of the data sent.
print "Content-type: text/html\
\
";
use CGI qw(:standard);

#prevent Perl from creating undeclared variables
use strict;

#declare variables
my ($fname, $lname, $city, $state, $country, $email, $comments, $data_ok, $msg);

if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq "POST") {
        ($fname, $lname, $city, $state, $country, $email, $comments) = get_input();
        ($fname, $lname, $country, $comments) = format_input();
        ($data_ok, $msg) = validate_input();
        if ($data_ok eq "Y") {
                save_to_file();
                create_acknowledgment_page();
        }
        else {
                create_error_page();
        }
}
else    {
        create_comments_page();
}
exit;

#*****user-defined functions*****
sub get_input {
        return param('firstname'), param('lastname'), param('city'), param('state'), param('country'), param('email'), 
param('Comments');
} #end get_input
        
sub format_input {
        #declare and assign values to temporary variables
        my ($f, $l, $co, $cm);
        ($f, $l, $co, $cm) = ($fname, $lname, $country, $comments);
        #remove leading and trailing spaces from first name
        $f =~ s/^ +//;  
        $f =~ s/ +$//;
        #remove leading and trailing spaces from last name
        $l =~ s/^ +//;
        $l =~ s/ +$//;
	#remove leading and trailing spaces from country
	$co =~ s/^ +//;
	$co =~ s/ +$//;
        #remove leading and trailing whitespace characters
        #from comments
        $cm =~ s/^\\s+//;
        $cm =~ s/\\s+$//;
        #replace return and newline combination within comments
        #with a space
        $cm =~ tr/\\r\
/ /;
        #remove extra spaces from within comments
        $cm =~ tr/ //s;
        return $f, $l, $co, $cm;
} #end format_input
        
sub validate_input {
	my $valid = "Y";
        my $errormsg; 
        if ($fname eq "" or $lname eq "" or $city eq "" or $state eq "" or $country eq "" or $email eq "" or $comments eq "") {  
                $valid = "N";
                $errormsg = "complete all items";
        }
        elsif ($email !~ m/[\\w\\-]+\\@[\\w\\-]+\\.[\\w\\-]+/) {
                $valid = "N";
                $errormsg = "enter a valid e-mail address";
        }
	return $valid, $errormsg;
} #end validate_input

sub save_to_file {
        open(OUTFILE, ">>", "comments.txt")
                or die "Error opening comments.txt for save. $!, stopped";
        print OUTFILE "$fname|$lname|$state|$city|$country|$email|$comments\
";
        close(OUTFILE);
} #end save_to_file
        
sub create_acknowledgment_page {
        print "<HTML>\
";
        print "<HEAD><TITLE>Guestbook</TITLE></HEAD>\
";
        print "<BODY>\
";
        print "<H2>Thank you for adding to our guestbook</H2>\
";
        print "<a href=http://crux.baker.edu/jlisec01/html/project/project3.html>Please return back to the form</a>\
";
        print "</BODY></HTML>\
";
} #end create_acknowledgment_page

sub create_error_page {
        print "<HTML>\
";
        print "<HEAD><TITLE>Guestbook</TITLE></HEAD>\
";
        print "<BODY>\
";
        print "<H2>Please return to the form and \
";
        print "$msg.</H2>\
";
        print "</BODY></HTML>\
";
} #end create_error_page
        
sub create_comments_page {
        my (@records, $firstn, $lastn, $cityf, $statef, $countryf, $emailf, $commentsf);
	open(INFILE, "<", "comments.txt")
                or die "Error opening comments.txt. $!, stopped";
        print "<HTML>\
";
        print "<HEAD><TITLE>Guestbook</TITLE></HEAD>\
";
        print "<BODY>\
";
        print "<H2>What other people have to say \
";
        print "on our guestbook:</H2>\
";
        @records = <INFILE>;
        close(INFILE);   
        foreach my $rec (@records) {
                chomp($rec);
                ($firstn, $lastn, $cityf, $statef, $countryf, $emailf, $commentsf) = split(/\\|/, $rec);
		print "<B>Name:</B> $firstn  $lastn<BR>\
";
		print "<B>Country:</B> $countryf<BR>\
";
                print "<B>Comments:</B> $commentsf<BR>\
";
                print "<HR>";
        }
        print "<a href="">Please return back to the form</a>\
";
        print "</BODY></HTML>\
";
} #end create_comments_page

Idk if anyone can help me out, maybe something to at least get me start, I’d really appreciate it, thanks!

Assuming this is your comments:


foreach my $rec (@records) {
                chomp($rec);
                ($firstn, $lastn, $cityf, $statef, $countryf, $emailf, $commentsf) = split(/\\|/, $rec); 

You’ll want to get every other $rec and give it an HTML class attribute (if a $rec is a whole post from someone) and CSS sheet would style that class.

Though, you don’t seem to have a huge amount of HTML in there. I’m assuming each individual post is wrapped in a Div or some similar element. Whatever wraps the information of a post, give it a class.

If the resulting HTML you have now really looks the way it’s looking to me, it’s not valid HTML and needs more block elements.