calling a PERL script in PHP

Anon

I've got a problem. I have a mostly complete commerce site. All done in PHP. We're using Verisign's Payflowpro for our credit card authorizations. From within PHP, I need to pass a couple of variables (amount, cc_number etc.) to a PERL script that will actually run the transaction and spit back the Verisign response string.

I've tried using exec() which works but not with a query string. And, I think virtual() would work but the server this is running on (at an ISP by the way so I can't use the built in PHP functions) is Roxen and I think virtual() is Apache specific.

Is there some other way to pass variables to this Perl script from within PHP? I could create this whole last step in PERL but I REALLY don't want to.

Anon

Hi Chris,

If you are not sending any data to the browser prior to sending the Perl script, you can also try:
<?php
header("Location: /Perl_script.pl");
exit;
?>
...
and have another PHP script to collect the output from the Perl processing later.

Hope that helps, let me know how it went my email id is: finetuner@vsnl.com

Regards,
Arup Bhanja
Bangalore,
INDIA.

Anon

Thank you Arup. Your suggestion worked perfectly.

Now all of it's credit card validation etc. is done in PHP. If all is well, it then redirects the location to the PERL script that runs the transaction, which in turn redirects to another PHP page, with the credit card transaction response in the query string.

Thanks for the help!

Chris

Anon

I am involved in the same process. I know php very well, but am not that familiar with perl. I do have the perl scripts for processing the credit card however.

How do I have the Perl script call another php script (or have the php script 'collect the output of the cc processing')?

Thanks in advance!

-=nathan

Anon

I ended up having the PERL script 1) write all the relevant information about the credit card transaction to the orders database and then 2) direct the visitor to a confirmation php page with the credit card confirmation number in the query string.

The php confirmation page retrieves the necessary information from the database using the credit card confirmation number.

#send results back to confirmation.php 
$conf_php_location = "https://....confirmation.php?"; 
$conf_php_location .= "transaction=$CC_CONF_NUM"; 
print "Location: $conf_php_location\n\n";