19.6. Form Generation

Perhaps you're tired of typing your program's parameter to your browser. Just make a fill-out form instead, which is what most folks are used to. The parts of the form that accept user input are typically called widgets , a much handier term than "graphical input devices." Form widgets include single- and multiline textfields, pop-up menus, scrolling lists, and various kinds of buttons and checkboxes.

Create the following HTML page, which includes a form with one text-field widget and a submit button. When the user clicks on the submit button,[7] the ice_cream script specified in the ACTION tag is called.

[7] Some browsers allow you to leave out the submit button when the form has only a single input text field. When the user types a return in this field, it is treated as a submit request. But it's best to use portable HTML here.

<!-- ice_cream.html -->
<HTML>
    <HEAD>
    <TITLE>Hello Ice Cream</TITLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY>
    <H1>Hello Ice Cream</H1>
    <FORM ACTION="http://www.SOMEWHERE.org/cgi-bin/ice_cream">
    What's your flavor? <INPUT NAME="favorite" VALUE="mint">
    <P>
    <INPUT TYPE="submit">
    </FORM>
    </BODY>
</HTML>

Remember that a CGI program can generate any HTML output you want, which will then be passed to any browser that fetches the program's URL. A CGI program can, therefore, produce the HTML page with the form on it, just as a CGI program can respond to the user's form input. Moreover, the same program can perform both tasks, one after the other. All you need to ...

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