Free HTML Cgi Web based Address Book

Setup

• unpack/uncompress the archive and place all files in the resulting "address" directory into your cgi-bin directory. e.g.
  • tar -xzf address.tar.gz
  • cp address/* ~/public_html/cgi-bin
• make sure that the cgi-bin directory, and all files ending with ".cgi" have 755 permissions.
  • chmod 755 ~/public_html/cgi-bin
  • chmod 755 ~/public_html/cgi-bin/*.cgi
• change into the cgi-bin directory and rename every file whose name has "bob" in it to one that has your name in it. e.g if your name is "barbara" do:
  • cd ~/public_html/cgi-bin
  • mv address_bob barbara.config
  • mv bob.config barbara.config
  • mv bob.pass barbara.pass
• edit the first four lines of the address.config files:
  • $home is the absolute path to you home directory. (e.g. $home = /grads/rbgramacy)
  • $cgi is the absolute path to your cgi-bin (e.g. $cgi = $home/.html/rbgramacy/cgi-bin).
  • $domain in the domain your account is in (e.g. $domain = www.cse.ucsc.edu).
  • $cgipath is the web location of the cgi bin relative to the domain (e.g. $domain$cgipath = www.cse.ucsc.edu/~rbgramacy/cgi-bin).
• change the password in your passfile (barbara.pass) using the pass command. The old password is "penguins".
  • pass barbara.pass
• to access your new address book go to
  • http://$domain$cgipath/address.cgi?book=barbara
• Multiple address books can be set up by copying the barbara files to another person's name, and recreating a new password.

Undocumented Features

• Seperating multiple phone numbers and/or email by commas will give them newlines (seperate entries) in the address book.
• All properly formed URL's in the "Other" field will be made links with the hypertext link "Webpage" to the specified URL.
• Pictures can be inserted into the picture field with absolute, or relatuve URLs.

Known Issues/Bugs

• Pass-cookie breaks 10 days before the new year, and won't work again until Jan 1st. This is due to poorly written cookie code that incorrectly calculates the cookie expiration date and taking into account the coming new year. Someday I'll get around to fixing this. I will be the next thing I do for this address book if I ever get time.
• If your browser prefers cached pages to recently edited pages you might notice that changes you have made to the address book (in particular the pass-cookie) are not reflected in a recently loaded page. If this happens you will need to force-reload the page. This is not an issue for Netscape / Mozilla / Internet Explorer. Konqueror is the only browser I've come across with this problem, but there could be others.
• After editing or adding an entry into the address book do NOT use the back button to re-edit the entry. This will result in multiple entries in the address book for the same person. Instead, find the recently added/edited entry, bring up the file and click "Edit this entry" again.
• There is currently no option to delete an entry in the address book. Therefore, to delete an entry you must delete the line in the address file (e.g. address_barbara) in the cgi-bin directory.
• MapQuest works only fo US/Canada addresses (as far as I know).
• Bug fixed for MacOSX Safari browser that arose cookies used PST instead of GMT for expiration. Now all cookies use GMT, so the bug dissappeared.
• Pass-cookie breaks 10 days before the new year, and won't work again until Jan 1st. This is due to poorly written cookie code that incorrectly calculates the cookie expiration date and taking into account the coming new year. Someday I'll get around to fixing this. I will be the next thing I do for this address book if I ever get time.

Please send questiones and comments to boobles_AT (_ucsc_DOT_edu). Enjoy!