SHELL SCRIPT RUNS AS PUBLIC USER WHEN INVOKED FROM BROWSER ALTHOUGH LOGGED

Question

I am trying to have a pdf converter which converts the HTML pages on the fly to pdf. For this I have an application
installed on the MT called HTMLDOC(opensource app). Now I can convert static
HTML pages on the MT using the command "HTMLDOC". After this I am using an sh
file which is place in cgi-bin which executes the the conversion on the fly,
getting the contents form the URL passed to it.
I am using this sh script(test.sh)
#!/bin/sh
HTMLDOC_NOCGI=1; export HTMLDOC_NOCGI
# The "options" variable contains any options you want to pass to HTMLDOC.
options="-t pdf --webpage "
# Tell the browser to expect a PDF file...
echo "Content-Type: application/pdf"
echo ""
# Run HTMLDOC to generate the PDF file...
htmldoc $options http://${SERVER_NAME}:${SERVER_PORT}$PATH_INFO
My normal HTML page is invoked as follows
http://<server>:<port>/dad/page.html
To convert to pdf I call the page as follows
http://<server>:<port>/cgi-bin/test.sh/dad/page.html
This will convert the page.html to a pdf. However the user is always PUBLIC, although I have logged
into the portal. Now since the user is always PUBLIC my application doesnt
render as expected. I need to have the user be logged in a valid OID user,
which it already is. I know this has something to do with the mod_osso.confg
file, but just doesnt seem to work. Could anyone help on this

Answer 1

Even though your cgi script is authenticated, it does not have access to your session/cookies when it makes it's own independent web request.<br>
You could ask it to log on first, which is how web clipping works, but then you'd have to manage credentials, i.e. you'd have to communicate your user name and password to the script. There's all kinds of issues with that and although possible, I wouldn't recommend it.<br>
<br>
Getting back to your requirement, you're looking to produce a printed version of the web page, right? Why don't you just create a special stylesheet for this purpose?<br>
You can override the portal classes, hide sections of the page, etc. <br>
<br>
The other option would be to setup a virtual PDF network printer using Ghostscript or something similar. There are also lots of PDF conversion services available on the net.<br>
<br>
HTH.<br>
<br>
Ingo<br>
<br>