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authorJeremy Hylton <jeremy@alum.mit.edu>2000-08-03 20:57:44 (GMT)
committerJeremy Hylton <jeremy@alum.mit.edu>2000-08-03 20:57:44 (GMT)
commitc253d9a6239489972b8807cf8e97395cbe19ba3f (patch)
treee0897445256435700eeb2696b2b836bc7e9c5a79 /Lib/cgi.py
parent8b9835cdb286f29ba7d2d06a6802bb4f8524555d (diff)
downloadcpython-c253d9a6239489972b8807cf8e97395cbe19ba3f.zip
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Remove very long doc string (it's all in the docs)
Modify parse_qsl to interpret 'a=b=c' as key 'a' and value 'b=c' (which matches Perl's CGI.pm)
Diffstat (limited to 'Lib/cgi.py')
-rwxr-xr-xLib/cgi.py402
1 files changed, 3 insertions, 399 deletions
diff --git a/Lib/cgi.py b/Lib/cgi.py
index 7c95706..0184472 100755
--- a/Lib/cgi.py
+++ b/Lib/cgi.py
@@ -4,406 +4,10 @@
This module defines a number of utilities for use by CGI scripts
written in Python.
-
-
-Introduction
-------------
-
-A CGI script is invoked by an HTTP server, usually to process user
-input submitted through an HTML <FORM> or <ISINPUT> element.
-
-Most often, CGI scripts live in the server's special cgi-bin
-directory. The HTTP server places all sorts of information about the
-request (such as the client's hostname, the requested URL, the query
-string, and lots of other goodies) in the script's shell environment,
-executes the script, and sends the script's output back to the client.
-
-The script's input is connected to the client too, and sometimes the
-form data is read this way; at other times the form data is passed via
-the "query string" part of the URL. This module (cgi.py) is intended
-to take care of the different cases and provide a simpler interface to
-the Python script. It also provides a number of utilities that help
-in debugging scripts, and the latest addition is support for file
-uploads from a form (if your browser supports it -- Grail 0.3 and
-Netscape 2.0 do).
-
-The output of a CGI script should consist of two sections, separated
-by a blank line. The first section contains a number of headers,
-telling the client what kind of data is following. Python code to
-generate a minimal header section looks like this:
-
- print "Content-type: text/html" # HTML is following
- print # blank line, end of headers
-
-The second section is usually HTML, which allows the client software
-to display nicely formatted text with header, in-line images, etc.
-Here's Python code that prints a simple piece of HTML:
-
- print "<TITLE>CGI script output</TITLE>"
- print "<H1>This is my first CGI script</H1>"
- print "Hello, world!"
-
-It may not be fully legal HTML according to the letter of the
-standard, but any browser will understand it.
-
-
-Using the cgi module
---------------------
-
-Begin by writing "import cgi". Don't use "from cgi import *" -- the
-module defines all sorts of names for its own use or for backward
-compatibility that you don't want in your namespace.
-
-It's best to use the FieldStorage class. The other classes define in this
-module are provided mostly for backward compatibility. Instantiate it
-exactly once, without arguments. This reads the form contents from
-standard input or the environment (depending on the value of various
-environment variables set according to the CGI standard). Since it may
-consume standard input, it should be instantiated only once.
-
-The FieldStorage instance can be accessed as if it were a Python
-dictionary. For instance, the following code (which assumes that the
-Content-type header and blank line have already been printed) checks that
-the fields "name" and "addr" are both set to a non-empty string:
-
- form = cgi.FieldStorage()
- form_ok = 0
- if form.has_key("name") and form.has_key("addr"):
- if form["name"].value != "" and form["addr"].value != "":
- form_ok = 1
- if not form_ok:
- print "<H1>Error</H1>"
- print "Please fill in the name and addr fields."
- return
- ...further form processing here...
-
-Here the fields, accessed through form[key], are themselves instances
-of FieldStorage (or MiniFieldStorage, depending on the form encoding).
-
-If the submitted form data contains more than one field with the same
-name, the object retrieved by form[key] is not a (Mini)FieldStorage
-instance but a list of such instances. If you are expecting this
-possibility (i.e., when your HTML form contains multiple fields with
-the same name), use the type() function to determine whether you have
-a single instance or a list of instances. For example, here's code
-that concatenates any number of username fields, separated by commas:
-
- username = form["username"]
- if type(username) is type([]):
- # Multiple username fields specified
- usernames = ""
- for item in username:
- if usernames:
- # Next item -- insert comma
- usernames = usernames + "," + item.value
- else:
- # First item -- don't insert comma
- usernames = item.value
- else:
- # Single username field specified
- usernames = username.value
-
-If a field represents an uploaded file, the value attribute reads the
-entire file in memory as a string. This may not be what you want. You can
-test for an uploaded file by testing either the filename attribute or the
-file attribute. You can then read the data at leisure from the file
-attribute:
-
- fileitem = form["userfile"]
- if fileitem.file:
- # It's an uploaded file; count lines
- linecount = 0
- while 1:
- line = fileitem.file.readline()
- if not line: break
- linecount = linecount + 1
-
-The file upload draft standard entertains the possibility of uploading
-multiple files from one field (using a recursive multipart/*
-encoding). When this occurs, the item will be a dictionary-like
-FieldStorage item. This can be determined by testing its type
-attribute, which should have the value "multipart/form-data" (or
-perhaps another string beginning with "multipart/"). It this case, it
-can be iterated over recursively just like the top-level form object.
-
-When a form is submitted in the "old" format (as the query string or as a
-single data part of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded), the items
-will actually be instances of the class MiniFieldStorage. In this case,
-the list, file and filename attributes are always None.
-
-
-Old classes
------------
-
-These classes, present in earlier versions of the cgi module, are still
-supported for backward compatibility. New applications should use the
-FieldStorage class.
-
-SvFormContentDict: single value form content as dictionary; assumes each
-field name occurs in the form only once.
-
-FormContentDict: multiple value form content as dictionary (the form
-items are lists of values). Useful if your form contains multiple
-fields with the same name.
-
-Other classes (FormContent, InterpFormContentDict) are present for
-backwards compatibility with really old applications only. If you still
-use these and would be inconvenienced when they disappeared from a next
-version of this module, drop me a note.
-
-
-Functions
----------
-
-These are useful if you want more control, or if you want to employ
-some of the algorithms implemented in this module in other
-circumstances.
-
-parse(fp, [environ, [keep_blank_values, [strict_parsing]]]): parse a
-form into a Python dictionary.
-
-parse_qs(qs, [keep_blank_values, [strict_parsing]]): parse a query
-string (data of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded). Data are
-returned as a dictionary. The dictionary keys are the unique query
-variable names and the values are lists of vales for each name.
-
-parse_qsl(qs, [keep_blank_values, [strict_parsing]]): parse a query
-string (data of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded). Data are
-returned as a list of (name, value) pairs.
-
-parse_multipart(fp, pdict): parse input of type multipart/form-data (for
-file uploads).
-
-parse_header(string): parse a header like Content-type into a main
-value and a dictionary of parameters.
-
-test(): complete test program.
-
-print_environ(): format the shell environment in HTML.
-
-print_form(form): format a form in HTML.
-
-print_environ_usage(): print a list of useful environment variables in
-HTML.
-
-escape(): convert the characters "&", "<" and ">" to HTML-safe
-sequences. Use this if you need to display text that might contain
-such characters in HTML. To translate URLs for inclusion in the HREF
-attribute of an <A> tag, use urllib.quote().
-
-log(fmt, ...): write a line to a log file; see docs for initlog().
-
-
-Caring about security
----------------------
-
-There's one important rule: if you invoke an external program (e.g.
-via the os.system() or os.popen() functions), make very sure you don't
-pass arbitrary strings received from the client to the shell. This is
-a well-known security hole whereby clever hackers anywhere on the web
-can exploit a gullible CGI script to invoke arbitrary shell commands.
-Even parts of the URL or field names cannot be trusted, since the
-request doesn't have to come from your form!
-
-To be on the safe side, if you must pass a string gotten from a form
-to a shell command, you should make sure the string contains only
-alphanumeric characters, dashes, underscores, and periods.
-
-
-Installing your CGI script on a Unix system
--------------------------------------------
-
-Read the documentation for your HTTP server and check with your local
-system administrator to find the directory where CGI scripts should be
-installed; usually this is in a directory cgi-bin in the server tree.
-
-Make sure that your script is readable and executable by "others"; the
-Unix file mode should be 755 (use "chmod 755 filename"). Make sure
-that the first line of the script contains #! starting in column 1
-followed by the pathname of the Python interpreter, for instance:
-
- #! /usr/local/bin/python
-
-Make sure the Python interpreter exists and is executable by "others".
-
-Note that it's probably not a good idea to use #! /usr/bin/env python
-here, since the Python interpreter may not be on the default path
-given to CGI scripts!!!
-
-Make sure that any files your script needs to read or write are
-readable or writable, respectively, by "others" -- their mode should
-be 644 for readable and 666 for writable. This is because, for
-security reasons, the HTTP server executes your script as user
-"nobody", without any special privileges. It can only read (write,
-execute) files that everybody can read (write, execute). The current
-directory at execution time is also different (it is usually the
-server's cgi-bin directory) and the set of environment variables is
-also different from what you get at login. in particular, don't count
-on the shell's search path for executables ($PATH) or the Python
-module search path ($PYTHONPATH) to be set to anything interesting.
-
-If you need to load modules from a directory which is not on Python's
-default module search path, you can change the path in your script,
-before importing other modules, e.g.:
-
- import sys
- sys.path.insert(0, "/usr/home/joe/lib/python")
- sys.path.insert(0, "/usr/local/lib/python")
-
-This way, the directory inserted last will be searched first!
-
-Instructions for non-Unix systems will vary; check your HTTP server's
-documentation (it will usually have a section on CGI scripts).
-
-
-Testing your CGI script
------------------------
-
-Unfortunately, a CGI script will generally not run when you try it
-from the command line, and a script that works perfectly from the
-command line may fail mysteriously when run from the server. There's
-one reason why you should still test your script from the command
-line: if it contains a syntax error, the python interpreter won't
-execute it at all, and the HTTP server will most likely send a cryptic
-error to the client.
-
-Assuming your script has no syntax errors, yet it does not work, you
-have no choice but to read the next section:
-
-
-Debugging CGI scripts
----------------------
-
-First of all, check for trivial installation errors -- reading the
-section above on installing your CGI script carefully can save you a
-lot of time. If you wonder whether you have understood the
-installation procedure correctly, try installing a copy of this module
-file (cgi.py) as a CGI script. When invoked as a script, the file
-will dump its environment and the contents of the form in HTML form.
-Give it the right mode etc, and send it a request. If it's installed
-in the standard cgi-bin directory, it should be possible to send it a
-request by entering a URL into your browser of the form:
-
- http://yourhostname/cgi-bin/cgi.py?name=Joe+Blow&addr=At+Home
-
-If this gives an error of type 404, the server cannot find the script
--- perhaps you need to install it in a different directory. If it
-gives another error (e.g. 500), there's an installation problem that
-you should fix before trying to go any further. If you get a nicely
-formatted listing of the environment and form content (in this
-example, the fields should be listed as "addr" with value "At Home"
-and "name" with value "Joe Blow"), the cgi.py script has been
-installed correctly. If you follow the same procedure for your own
-script, you should now be able to debug it.
-
-The next step could be to call the cgi module's test() function from
-your script: replace its main code with the single statement
-
- cgi.test()
-
-This should produce the same results as those gotten from installing
-the cgi.py file itself.
-
-When an ordinary Python script raises an unhandled exception (e.g.,
-because of a typo in a module name, a file that can't be opened,
-etc.), the Python interpreter prints a nice traceback and exits.
-While the Python interpreter will still do this when your CGI script
-raises an exception, most likely the traceback will end up in one of
-the HTTP server's log file, or be discarded altogether.
-
-Fortunately, once you have managed to get your script to execute
-*some* code, it is easy to catch exceptions and cause a traceback to
-be printed. The test() function below in this module is an example.
-Here are the rules:
-
- 1. Import the traceback module (before entering the
- try-except!)
-
- 2. Make sure you finish printing the headers and the blank
- line early
-
- 3. Assign sys.stderr to sys.stdout
-
- 3. Wrap all remaining code in a try-except statement
-
- 4. In the except clause, call traceback.print_exc()
-
-For example:
-
- import sys
- import traceback
- print "Content-type: text/html"
- print
- sys.stderr = sys.stdout
- try:
- ...your code here...
- except:
- print "\n\n<PRE>"
- traceback.print_exc()
-
-Notes: The assignment to sys.stderr is needed because the traceback
-prints to sys.stderr. The print "\n\n<PRE>" statement is necessary to
-disable the word wrapping in HTML.
-
-If you suspect that there may be a problem in importing the traceback
-module, you can use an even more robust approach (which only uses
-built-in modules):
-
- import sys
- sys.stderr = sys.stdout
- print "Content-type: text/plain"
- print
- ...your code here...
-
-This relies on the Python interpreter to print the traceback. The
-content type of the output is set to plain text, which disables all
-HTML processing. If your script works, the raw HTML will be displayed
-by your client. If it raises an exception, most likely after the
-first two lines have been printed, a traceback will be displayed.
-Because no HTML interpretation is going on, the traceback will
-readable.
-
-When all else fails, you may want to insert calls to log() to your
-program or even to a copy of the cgi.py file. Note that this requires
-you to set cgi.logfile to the name of a world-writable file before the
-first call to log() is made!
-
-Good luck!
-
-
-Common problems and solutions
------------------------------
-
-- Most HTTP servers buffer the output from CGI scripts until the
-script is completed. This means that it is not possible to display a
-progress report on the client's display while the script is running.
-
-- Check the installation instructions above.
-
-- Check the HTTP server's log files. ("tail -f logfile" in a separate
-window may be useful!)
-
-- Always check a script for syntax errors first, by doing something
-like "python script.py".
-
-- When using any of the debugging techniques, don't forget to add
-"import sys" to the top of the script.
-
-- When invoking external programs, make sure they can be found.
-Usually, this means using absolute path names -- $PATH is usually not
-set to a very useful value in a CGI script.
-
-- When reading or writing external files, make sure they can be read
-or written by every user on the system.
-
-- Don't try to give a CGI script a set-uid mode. This doesn't work on
-most systems, and is a security liability as well.
-
"""
-# XXX The module is getting pretty heavy with all those docstrings.
-# Perhaps there should be a slimmed version that doesn't contain all those
-# backwards compatible and debugging classes and functions?
+# XXX Perhaps there should be a slimmed version that doesn't contain
+# all those backwards compatible and debugging classes and functions?
# History
# -------
@@ -592,7 +196,7 @@ def parse_qsl(qs, keep_blank_values=0, strict_parsing=0):
name_value_pairs = string.splitfields(qs, '&')
r=[]
for name_value in name_value_pairs:
- nv = string.splitfields(name_value, '=')
+ nv = string.splitfields(name_value, '=', 1)
if len(nv) != 2:
if strict_parsing:
raise ValueError, "bad query field: %s" % `name_value`