July 2006
Beginner to intermediate
734 pages
20h 6m
English
Content preview from Python in a Nutshell, 2nd EditionBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 21. CGI Scripting and Alternatives
When a web browser (or any other web client) requests a page from a web server, the server may return either static or dynamic content. Serving dynamic content involves server-side web programs to generate and deliver content on the fly, often based on information stored in a database. The long-standing web-wide standard for server-side programming is known as CGI, which stands for Common Gateway Interface:
A web client (typically a browser) sends a structured request to a web server.
The server executes another program, passing the content of the request.
The server captures the standard output of the other program.
The server sends that output to the client as the response to the original request.
In other words, the server’s role is that of a gateway between the client and the other program. The other program is called a CGI program, or CGI script.
CGI enjoys the typical advantages of standards. When you program to the CGI standard, your program can be deployed on all web servers, and work despite the differences. This chapter focuses on CGI scripting in Python. It also mentions the downsides of CGI (basically, issues of scalability under high load) and, in Other Server-Side Approaches, some of the many alternative, nonstandard server-side architectures that you can use instead of CGI. Nowadays, the nonstandard alternatives are often superior because they do not constrain your deployment much, and they can support higher-level abstractions ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.