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The Common Gateway Interface, or CGI, is a set of standards that define how information is exchanged between the web server and a custom script. The CGI specs are currently maintained by the NCSA.

What is CGI?

  • The Common Gateway Interface, or CGI, is a standard for external gateway programs to interface with information servers such as HTTP servers.

  • The current version is CGI/1.1 and CGI/1.2 is under progress.

Web Browsing

To understand the concept of CGI, let us see what happens when we click a hyper link to browse a particular web page or URL.

  • Your browser contacts the HTTP web server and demands for the URL, i.e., filename.

  • Web Server parses the URL and looks for the filename. If it finds that file then sends it back to the browser, otherwise sends an error message indicating that you requested a wrong file.

  • Web browser takes response from web server and displays either the received file or error message.

However, it is possible to set up the HTTP server so that whenever a file in a certain directory is requested that file is not sent back; instead it is executed as a program, and whatever that program outputs is sent back for your browser to display. This function is called the Common Gateway Interface or CGI and the programs are called CGI scripts. These CGI programs can be a Python Script, PERL Script, Shell Script, C or C++ program, etc.

CGI Architecture Diagram


Web Server Support and Configuration

Before you proceed with CGI Programming, make sure that your Web Server supports CGI and it is configured to handle CGI Programs. All the CGI Programs to be executed by the HTTP server are kept in a pre-configured directory. This directory is called CGI Directory and by convention it is named as /var/www/cgi-bin. By convention, CGI files have extension as. cgi, but you can keep your files with python extension .py as well.

By default, the Linux server is configured to run only the scripts in the cgi-bin directory in /var/www. If you want to specify any other directory to run your CGI scripts, comment the following lines in the httpd.conf file −

<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">

   AllowOverride None

   Options ExecCGI

   Order allow,deny

   Allow from all

</Directory>


<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">

Options All

</Directory>

Here, we assume that you have Web Server up and running successfully and you are able to run any other CGI program like Perl or Shell, etc.

First CGI Program

Here is a simple link, which is linked to a CGI script called hello.py. This file is kept in /var/www/cgi-bin directory and it has following content. Before running your CGI program, make sure you have change mode of file using chmod 755 hello.py UNIX command to make file executable.

#!/usr/bin/python


print "Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n"

print '<html>'

print '<head>'

print '<title>Hello World - First CGI Program</title>'

print '</head>'

print '<body>'

print '<h2>Hello World! This is my first CGI program</h2>'

print '</body>'

print '</html>'

Output −

Hello World! This is my first CGI program


GET and POST Methods

You must have come across many situations when you need to pass some information from your browser to web server and ultimately to your CGI Program. Most frequently, browser uses two methods two pass this information to web server. These methods are GET Method and POST Method.

Passing Information using GET method

The GET method sends the encoded user information appended to the page request. The page and the encoded information are separated by the ? character as follows −

http://www.test.com/cgi-bin/hello.py?key1=value1&key2=value2

The GET method is the default method to pass information from browser to web server and it produces a long string that appears in your browser's Location:box. Never use GET method if you have password or other sensitive information to pass to the server. The GET method has size limitation: only 1024 characters can be sent in a request string. The GET method sends information using QUERY_STRING header and will be accessible in your CGI Program through QUERY_STRING environment variable.

You can pass information by simply concatenating key and value pairs along with any URL or you can use HTML <FORM> tags to pass information using GET method.

Simple URL Example:Get Method

Here is a simple URL, which passes two values to hello_get.py program using GET method.

/cgi-bin/hello_get.py?first_name=ZARA&last_name=ALI

Below is hello_get.py script to handle input given by web browser. We are going to use cgi module, which makes it very easy to access passed information −

#!/usr/bin/python


# Import modules for CGI handling 

import cgi, cgitb 


# Create instance of FieldStorage 

form = cgi.FieldStorage() 


# Get data from fields

first_name = form.getvalue('first_name')

last_name  = form.getvalue('last_name')


print "Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n"

print "<html>"

print "<head>"

print "<title>Hello - Second CGI Program</title>"

print "</head>"

print "<body>"

print "<h2>Hello %s %s</h2>" % (first_name, last_name)

print "</body>"

print "</html>"


Output-

Hello ZARA ALI


Simple FORM Example:GET Method

This example passes two values using HTML FORM and submit button. We use same CGI script hello_get.py to handle this input.

<form action = "/cgi-bin/hello_get.py" method = "get">
First Name: <input type = "text" name = "first_name">  <br />

Last Name: <input type = "text" name = "last_name" />
<input type = "submit" value = "Submit" />
</form> 


Output-

First Name: 
Last Name:  


Passing Information Using POST Method

A generally more reliable method of passing information to a CGI program is the POST method. This packages the information in exactly the same way as GET methods, but instead of sending it as a text string after a ? in the URL it sends it as a separate message. This message comes into the CGI script in the form of the standard input.

Below is same hello_get.py script which handles GET as well as POST method.

#!/usr/bin/python


# Import modules for CGI handling 

import cgi, cgitb 


# Create instance of FieldStorage 

form = cgi.FieldStorage() 


# Get data from fields

first_name = form.getvalue('first_name')

last_name  = form.getvalue('last_name')


print "Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n"

print "<html>"

print "<head>"

print "<title>Hello - Second CGI Program</title>"

print "</head>"

print "<body>"

print "<h2>Hello %s %s</h2>" % (first_name, last_name)

print "</body>"

print "</html>"



Let us take again same example as above which passes two values using HTML FORM and submit button. We use same CGI script hello_get.py to handle this input.


<form action = "/cgi-bin/hello_get.py" method = "post">

First Name: <input type = "text" name = "first_name"><br />

Last Name: <input type = "text" name = "last_name" />

<input type = "submit" value = "Submit" />

</form>

Output-
First Name: 
Last Name:  

Passing Checkbox Data to CGI Program
Checkboxes are used when more than one option is required to be selected.

Here is example HTML code for a form with two checkboxes −

<form action = "/cgi-bin/checkbox.cgi" method = "POST" target = "_blank">
<input type = "checkbox" name = "maths" value = "on" /> Maths
<input type = "checkbox" name = "physics" value = "on" /> Physics
<input type = "submit" value = "Select Subject" />
</form>

Output-
 Maths  Physics 
Below is checkbox.cgi script to handle input given by web browser for checkbox button.

#!/usr/bin/python

# Import modules for CGI handling 
import cgi, cgitb 

# Create instance of FieldStorage 
form = cgi.FieldStorage() 

# Get data from fields
if form.getvalue('maths'):
   math_flag = "ON"
else:
   math_flag = "OFF"

if form.getvalue('physics'):
   physics_flag = "ON"
else:
   physics_flag = "OFF"

print "Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n"
print "<html>"
print "<head>"
print "<title>Checkbox - Third CGI Program</title>"
print "</head>"
print "<body>"
print "<h2> CheckBox Maths is : %s</h2>" % math_flag
print "<h2> CheckBox Physics is : %s</h2>" % physics_flag
print "</body>"
print "</html>"




Passing Radio Button Data to CGI Program
Radio Buttons are used when only one option is required to be selected.

Here is example HTML code for a form with two radio buttons −

<form action = "/cgi-bin/radiobutton.py" method = "post" target = "_blank">
<input type = "radio" name = "subject" value = "maths" /> Maths
<input type = "radio" name = "subject" value = "physics" /> Physics
<input type = "submit" value = "Select Subject" />
</form>

Output-

The result of this code is the following form −

 Maths  Physics 


Below is radiobutton.py script to handle input given by web browser for radio button −

#!/usr/bin/python

# Import modules for CGI handling 
import cgi, cgitb 

# Create instance of FieldStorage 
form = cgi.FieldStorage() 

# Get data from fields
if form.getvalue('subject'):
   subject = form.getvalue('subject')
else:
   subject = "Not set"

print "Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n"
print "<html>"
print "<head>"
print "<title>Radio - Fourth CGI Program</title>"
print "</head>"
print "<body>"
print "<h2> Selected Subject is %s</h2>" % subject
print "</body>"
print "</html>"

Passing Text Area Data to CGI Program
TEXTAREA element is used when multiline text has to be passed to the CGI Program.

Here is example HTML code for a form with a TEXTAREA box −

<form action = "/cgi-bin/textarea.py" method = "post" target = "_blank">
<textarea name = "textcontent" cols = "40" rows = "4">
Type your text here...
</textarea>
<input type = "submit" value = "Submit" />
</form>

Output-

The result of this code is the following form −

 

Below is textarea.cgi script to handle input given by web browser −

#!/usr/bin/python

# Import modules for CGI handling 
import cgi, cgitb 

# Create instance of FieldStorage 
form = cgi.FieldStorage() 

# Get data from fields
if form.getvalue('textcontent'):
   text_content = form.getvalue('textcontent')
else:
   text_content = "Not entered"

print "Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n"
print "<html>"
print "<head>";
print "<title>Text Area - Fifth CGI Program</title>"
print "</head>"
print "<body>"
print "<h2> Entered Text Content is %s</h2>" % text_content
print "</body>"

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