Introduction to CGI
Conventional Web sites made up of static HTML pages are fine in their way. Server-side includes let you embed a lot of useful functionality into regular HTML pages. However, for true Web applications (such as e-commerce sites, message boards, databases, and anything where the system tailors its content to the actions of the user), you need a server-side programming environment to handle the user's input and control the requested output. The standard way to do this is CGI, the Common Gateway Interface.
CGI exists as a “mediator” protocol, a layer of the Web server that allows you to use HTML forms to take in users' data, which the server (through CGI) feeds in a common format to any program on the server, regardless of what ...
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