3. CGI module

Status:in progress

The cgi module contains suprinsingly functions to build up CGI script. GI script can be written to handle many tasks such as user input form, databases requests and other programs available on the server side.

3.1. Quick start

A simple CGI script looks like:

#!/usr/bin/python
print "Content-Type: text/plain\n\n"
print "Whatever HTML code would now work"

The second line is compulsary!! When you write a new script, consider adding these lines:

import cgitb
cgitb.enable()

This activates a handler that will display detailed reports in the Web browser if any errors occur.

3.2. Forms

The cgi.FieldStorage() class can be used to manipulate forms (and input from the user). The following code checks that the fields name and addr are both set to a non-empty string:

form = cgi.FieldStorage()
if "name" not in form or "addr" not in form:
    print "<H1>Error</H1>"
    print  "Please fill in the name and email fields."
    return
print "<p>name:", form["login"].value
print "<p>pwd:", form["email"].value
...further form processing here...

The HTML code would be something like:

<form method="post" action="validate.py">
<p>login:<input type="text" name="login", value=""></p>
<p>login:<input type="text" name="email", value=""></p>
<p>password:<input type="password" name="password", value=""></p>
<input type="submit" value="SUBMIT">
</form>

The forms in CGI script constitute a language by itself and is not covered here.

3.3. todo

cgi.FormContent            cgi.parse
cgi.ForContentDict        cgi.parse_header
cgi.InterpFormContentDict  cgi.parse_multipart
cgi.MiniFieldStorage       cgi.parse_qs
cgi.StringIO               cgi.parse_qsl
cgi.SvFormContentDict      cgi.print_arguments
cgi.UserDict               cgi.print_directory
cgi.attrgetter             cgi.print_environ
cgi.catch_warnings         cgi.print_environ_usage
cgi.dolog                  cgi.print_exception
cgi.escape                 cgi.print_form
cgi.filterwarnings         cgi.rfc822
cgi.initlog                cgi.sys
cgi.log                    cgi.test
cgi.logfile                cgi.urllib
cgi.logfp                  cgi.urlparse
cgi.maxlen                 cgi.valid_boundary
cgi.mimetools              cgi.warn
cgi.nolog

References:http://docs.python.org/2/library/cgi.html