Expiry Script - Perl Programming

Posted by TedH (TedH), 28 June 2006

You spent a lot of money going on Graham's course, then considerably more time developing a Perl application. Often webmasters have a script or system which they license out on a yearly basis to clients hosted on their web server. After all, you've done a lot work here and would like to see some reward for it, recoup your expenses and pay your mortgage.

I've received a lot from this forum and thought it might be nice to contribute something for a change.

This is a script I've written and use for license expiry on a system I've put together for client usage. It's quite simple. I've tried to see if I could break it and it's stood the course. There may be simpler ways of doing this, but then I'm not that expert at it.

You can incorporate this by a require (name it to something obscure) in your main script. I use an external HTML page for notification (it looks nicer). There's no name to this script - make up your own.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Expiry Script
# Ted Hawkins (ted-hawkins.com)
# Free to use as you want.
## ------------------------------ ##
## Change the targets to reflect ##
## your script where noted below. ##
## Alter dates as needed. ##
## ------------------------------ ##

# use CGI::Carp qw(warningsToBrowser fatalsToBrowser);
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
$expurl = "http://ANYURLTO/expiry.html"; # Separate expiry page;

# Alter dates here.
$expirydate = "20100430"; # Expiry date for calculations (MUST be in this format).
$runsouton = "30.04.2010"; # Expiry date for viewing.

print "<html><head><title></title></head><body><basefont face=verdana font size=4>\n";

# time calculations (alter for gmtime or localtime as needed)
&endTheyear; # calls the key sub routine
sub endTheyear {
### date and time
# ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year) = gmtime;
($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year) = localtime;
$year = $year + 1900;
$mon = $mon + 1;
if ($mon <10) {$mon = "0$mon";}
if ($mday <10) {$mday = "0$mday";}
if ($hour<10) {$hour = "0$hour";}
if ($min<10) {$min = "0$min";}
$nowtime = ($mday.".".$mon.".".$year); # for current date
$licensetime = ($year.$mon.$mday); # expiry date in ISO numeric only format

## ===== Change target sub routines to reflect your script ===== ##
if($expirydate > $licensetime) {&licenseOkay;} # Take to Okay notice.
# if($expirydate > $licensetime) {&ANYSUBROUTINE;} # Replaces 'licenseOkay' with new target.
elsif ($expirydate <= $licensetime) {&expired;} # Takes to expired notice.
}

sub expired {
# print "<meta http-equiv=refresh content='0; url=$expurl'>\n"; # META refresh to another page

## ===== Delete this if using external page ===== ##
print <<"EXPRD";
<div align="center">
Today's date is: $nowtime<br>
<br><div align="center" style="background:red; color:white; border:1px solid; padding:10; width:400;">
<b>Your License expired on:<br>$runsouton</b></div></div>
EXPRD
}

## ===== Delete this when using your target sub-routine ===== ##
sub licenseOkay {
print <<"ISOK";
<div align="center">
Today's date is: $nowtime<br>
<br><div align="center" style="background:lightblue; border:1px solid; padding:10; width:400;">
This license is good.<br>It expires on $runsouton</div></div>
ISOK
}
# end

Enjoy - Ted

Posted by admin (Graham Ellis), 28 June 2006

Ted, Thank you.

I'm in Dublin / hotel connection just at the moment so can't look and analyse in comforatble detail, but I happen to be starting work on a script with an expiry element over the next few days. Think I'll start by looking at yours

- Graham

Posted by TedH (TedH), 28 June 2006

Have fun in Dublin Graham.

One thing readers may notice is that I've used a META redirect to the URL for an external page.

This should be okay as it is in a Perl script and search engine robots don't look there. Also it means you can use this on a Windows server as well.

Apache on a Unix based server has other methods of redirect available and they can be used if needed.

Or your expiry notice could simply be inside a/the Perl script. There's a lot of flexibility here.

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