web service for .sav file translation

[Ben Pfaff]

I've noticed that a lot of users want to use PSPP just to
translate .sav files into other formats, because they don't have
SPSS available.  But sometimes it's hard for them to install PSPP
to do that.  So I've been working a little bit on a PSPP-based
web service that can do that without having to install any
special software.

Here is an alpha version:
        http://pspp.benpfaff.org/conversion.html

It is pretty featureless, but it does work.

What do you think of this idea?

The code is simple:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use CGI;
use PSPP;
use Digest::MD5;

$CGI::POST_MAX = 10 * 1024 * 1024;  # max 10 MB posts

my $q = new CGI;

if ($q->param('file')) {
    my $temp = $q->upload ('file');

    my $ctx = Digest::MD5->new;
    $ctx->addfile ($temp);
    my $digest = $ctx->hexdigest;
    my $file = "/home/www-pspp/input/$digest.sav";

    seek ($temp, 0, 0);
    open (FILE, '>', $file);
    my $s;
    while (sysread ($temp, $s, 4096)) {
        syswrite (FILE, $s);
    }
    close FILE;

    my $reader = PSPP::Reader->open ($file);
    my $dict = $reader->get_dict ();
    print "Content-type: text/plain\r\n\r\n";
    while (my @case = $reader->get_next_case ()) {
        my @values;
        for (my $i = 0; $i < $dict->get_var_cnt (); $i++) {
            push (@values, PSPP::format_value ($case[$i], $dict->get_var ($i)));
        }
        print join (',', @values), "\n";
    }
}

-- 
Ben Pfaff 
http://benpfaff.org