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**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [February 13, 2008, 10:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/html-form-action-calling-a-ruby-def/129065 "2008-02-13T22:48:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@Serg\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Serg_K)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2008, 10:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/html-form-action-calling-a-ruby-def/129065/1 "2008-02-13T22:48:07Z")
Hi,
Does anyone have a solution to calling a Ruby method when someone
clicks on the Submit button of an HTML form (without Rails)? And an
ancillary question, is there a way to catch the form input into Ruby
variables? My understanding is that the action element needs to
invoke the server side logic which is a bother if you want to get form
input and pre-process it.
Thanks!
---
**Author:**  [@Serg\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Serg_K)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/html-form-action-calling-a-ruby-def/129065/2 "2008-02-14T00:19:58Z")
Serg K. wrote:
> Hi,
> Does anyone have a solution to calling a Ruby method when someone
> clicks on the Submit button of an HTML form (without Rails)? And an
> ancillary question, is there a way to catch the form input into Ruby
> variables? My understanding is that the action element needs to
> invoke the server side logic which is a bother if you want to get form
> input and pre-process it.
>
> Thanks!
You can use Ruby exactly as you would use other languages such as Perl
to do this. For instance, place your Ruby script in the cgi-bin
directory, set up the web server to know that .rb or .cgi maps to ruby
(differs depending on OS and web server), and then write your script.
Set the post method of the form to be the URL of your script. Use the
Ruby CGI library
([http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/cgi/rdoc/index.html](http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/cgi/rdoc/index.html)) that handles
a lot of the details for you.
This section I pasted below is from the CGI docs regarding form inputs
and Ruby variables. From this it should be clear that passing form
parameters into Ruby variables is trivial.
-Jim
```
Parameters
```
The method params() returns a hash of all parameters in the request as
name/value-list pairs, where the value-list is an Array of one or more
values. The CGI
[http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/cgi/rdoc/classes/CGI.html](http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/cgi/rdoc/classes/CGI.html) object
itself also behaves as a hash of parameter names to values, but only
returns a single value (as a String) for each parameter name.
For instance, suppose the request contains the parameter
“favourite\_colours” with the multiple values “blue” and “green”. The
following behaviour would occur:
cgi.params[“favourite\_colours”] # =\> [“blue”, “green”]
cgi[“favourite\_colours”] # =\> “blue”
If a parameter does not exist, the former method will return an empty
array, the latter an empty string. The simplest way to test for
existence of a parameter is by the has\_key? method.
---
**Author:**  [@Serg\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Serg_K)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2008, 12:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/html-form-action-calling-a-ruby-def/129065/3 "2008-02-14T00:41:09Z")
Um I dont want to call the server. I know I can call the server and
handle it via cgi. I want to capture the input and process it
locally on the web page client PRIOR to a server side send… Sort of
like javascript. I dont think its doable. I was hoping for magic.
Oh well.
Thx anyway.
Sent from my iPhone