Basic cgi (programs that make web pages).
Writing Scripts. Setting up a CGI script can be extremely frustrating. While the basic concepts are simple, there are many steps, and missing any of them will cause your CGI script to fail. The following steps should be sufficient to get your first CGI script up and running in your home directory.
Processing the HTML form using CGI. Here is a very simple HTML page with a form. The form has 3 fields. a text field called fullname, a selector called country, and a textarea called question. I assume you already understand this part. What might be new, are the parameters of the form itself. The action is the URL to the CGI.
There are 2 types of CGI scripts: Those which output HTML pages Those which process the input from CGI forms. Invariably, this second type, having processed the data, will output an HTML page or form to let the user continue, or at least know what happened, or they will do a CGI redirect to another script which outputs something.
CGI scripts are used to create dynamic Web pages. When you fill out and submit a form or add your name to a guestbook, you're using CGI. Learn what CGI is and how to create your very own scripts.
The HTML ISINDEX tag is used for data input to the script. CGI uses two methods to pass data between the browser and the web server, GET and POST. The GET method passes data in the URL and is the method employed here. The web server will pass environment variables into the execution environment of the CGI shell script which also may be used.
Quite simply, CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface.That’s a fancy term for something we all know as Application Programming Interface. So, CGI is the API for the web server. The web server, of course, is the software that sends web pages to web browsers.
Introduction. This book is intended for web designers, entrepreneurs, students, teachers, and anyone who is interested in learning CGI programming with Perl. You do not need any programming experience to get started; if you can write HTML, you can write CGI programs.