MyBrandedHOST -- Dedicated Server License Provisioning Code Explained

Dedicated Server License Provisioning Code Explained

Primarily, you'll need to configure the server to use the licensing API. GO into Manage2 and dowload the API Guide under Automation to find the pre-requisites and installation instructions.

After the API code is installed, we need to make sure we're using that code:.

									require '/usr/local/XMLCPL/cPanelLicensing.pm';

Then, we need to grab the data that we are passing from our form (Noting the data will be different depending on what you ask for in the HTML):

									my $query = CGI->new();
									my $hostname = $query->param('hostname');
									my $domainname = $query->param('domain');
									my $username = $query->param('user');
									my $userpass = $query->param('pass');
									my $ccnumber = $query->param('ccnum');
									my $ccexpiration = $query->param('ccexp');
									my $emailaddy = $query->param('email');

You'll want to do a lot of verification to check things like whether or not the user exists in your system, whether their credit card number is good, etc. Those functions will be specific to your billing solution and we've simply included dummy functions for those items.

You'll want to take note of the issueLicense function:

												sub issueLicense{
													my $ip = shift;
													my $licenseManager = cPanelLicensing->new(user => "", pass=> "");  #need your user/pass here. You might want to create the licensing object somewhere else if this file is in a web accessible area
													$licenseManager->activateLicense(ip => $ip, groupid => xxx, packageid => xxx, force => 0);
													return 1;
												}

We can easily connect to the license server with our Manage2 username and password:

												my $licenseManager = cPanelLicensing->new(user => "", pass=> "");

issueLicense uses the following code to issue a license for the ip address passed to it:

												$licenseManager->activateLicense(ip => $ip, groupid => xxx, packageid => xxx, force => 0);

You'll notice that a groupid and packageid are specified. You can find the groups and packages you have available with this code:

												my %groups = $licenseManager->fetchGroups();
												my %packages = $licenseManager->fetchPackages();
												foreach my $key (%groups){
													print "group: $groups{$key}\n";
												}
												foreach my $key (%packages){
													print "package: $packages{$key}\n";
												}

The rest of the picture is the HTML form used to gather the data passed to your script. Here's the form. Simply replace the following code with whichever values you need to collect and change the cgi params above accordingly:

										<form name="serverorderform" id="serverorderform" action="process-server.cgi" onSubmit="return checkForm();" />
													<p>Step 1: Choose the hostname of the server</p>
													<div class="form" style="margin-left:15px;"><input type="text" name="hostname" /></div>
													<p>Step 2: Choose a username</p>
													<div class="form" style="margin-left:15px;"><input type="text" name="user" /></div>
													<p>Step 3: Choose a password</p>
													<div class="form" style="margin-left:15px;"><input type="password" name="pass" /></div>
													<br />
													<strong class="h_text">Billing Information</strong><br>
													<p>Step 4: Credit Card Number</p>
													<div class="form" style="margin-left:15px;"><input type="password" name="ccnum" /></div>
													<p>Step 5: Expiration Date</p>
													<div class="form" style="margin-left:15px;"><input type="password" name="ccexp" size="4" /></div>
													<p>Step 6: Email Address</p>
													<div class="form" style="margin-left:15px;"><input type="text" name="email" /></div>
													<br />
													<input type="image" src="images/submit.gif">
											</form>

Finally, some JavaScript is used to make sure the user isn't submitting a blank form. You'll definitely want to add some specific JavaScript to validate the information you are looking for from the form:

											<script type="text/javascript">
											function checkForm(){
												document.getElementById("errorspace").innerHTML = '';
												var passthis = true;
												if (document.serverorderform.hostname.value == ''){
													document.getElementById("errorspace").innerHTML += 'Please enter a hostname<br />';
													passthis = false;
												}
												if (document.serverorderform.user.value == ''){
													document.getElementById("errorspace").innerHTML += 'Please enter a username<br />';
													passthis = false;
												}
												if (document.serverorderform.pass.value == ''){
													document.getElementById("errorspace").innerHTML += 'Please enter a password<br />';
													passthis = false;
												}
												if (document.serverorderform.ccnum.value == ''){
													document.getElementById("errorspace").innerHTML += 'Please enter your credit card number<br />';
													passthis = false;
												}
												if (document.serverorderform.ccexp.value == ''){
													document.getElementById("errorspace").innerHTML += 'Please enter your credit card expiration date<br />';
													passthis = false;
												}
												if (document.serverorderform.email.value == ''){
													document.getElementById("errorspace").innerHTML += 'Please enter your email address<br />';
													passthis = false;
												}
												return passthis;
											}

											</script>