The file “x.html” has content:
<html> abc <form Action="../../cgibin/x.cgi">def <input name="wer" type=int></form> ghi </html>The “input” tag causes the browser to draw a text entry field which invites text from the user. If the user enters text there and types a CR then that text is delivered to the program named by the “Action” keyword in the “form” tag. The rest of this note is mainly describing how to produce such programs.
As it stands the file /cgibin/x.cgi holds text:
#!/bin/sh echo "content-type: text/plain" echo echo Booo $QUERY_STRING printenvThe web server, Apache in my case, must know that the file “/cgibin/x.cgi” is to be obeyed (executed) as a program rather than transmitted to the browser. Instead the output of the program is transmitted to the browser. Your directory /cgibin may or may not already have been introduced to the server as a directory of programs. If the contents of the file show up at the browser then putting the file .htaccess in the cgibin directory should fix the problem. The file’s content is:
Options +ExecCGI SetHandler cgi-scriptUnix Shells and the Mac Finder both like to pretend that files whose name begins with “.” do not exist and this causes great confusion. “ls -ltd .*” as a shell command will reveal them. The server will ignore the .htaccess file unless you have AllowOverride in your server configuration file. See “AllowOverride” in this file.
The form of the .cgi files has to do with the site’s operating system which is Unix here. In particular the language of x.cgi is shell script because the initial text “/bin/sh” nominates the program to interpret the rest of the file x.cgi. I won’t be saying much about shell scripts here but “echo zot” means send “zot” to the browser except if “$QUERY_STRING” is found in the string then it is replaced by the text offered by the browser user. “QUERY_STRING” is the name of an environment variable to which is assigned the input field value before the cgi program runs. “printenv” shows all of the other environment variables and their values. The “content-type: text/plain” tells the browser how to process the file. That and the following blank line are part of http protocol.
Now we will do the same job in the programming language C. I am generally critical of the amount of boilerplate necessary for web function. Here is the remarkably short C code to do this simple echo function. (If you would prefer what some think an easier language to learn, see information on Perl.) On Unix I compiled with the shell command gcc -Wall echo.c and then moved the new file “a.out” to the cgibin directory where it is called Cversion.cgi. The name “cgibin” is purely conventional but the Apache book gives some plausible reasons for following that convention. The “.cgi” in the file name is special, however. So here is a test of the new cgi function:
Note the connection between what you type and the URL that your browser uses to evoke the reply from the server. Note that some characters are escaped. Try text with spaces and plus signs. The rationale for this escaping is that the text travels from the browser to the web server within an URL and characters within URLs have many special meanings. It is all part of the http protocol. The web server could have undone these escapes, but it doesn’t. See this about simple cookie logic.Now we deceive a bit. Notice the “Cancel” button actually sends the file in this version.