19.4. CGI: Helping Web Servers Process Client Data

19.4.1. Introduction to CGI

The Web was initially developed to be a global online repository or archive of (mostly educational and research-oriented) documents. Such pieces of information generally come in the form of static text and usually in HTML (HyperText Markup Language). [Many documents also exist in plain text, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), or Extensible Markup Language (XML) format, a generalized markup language.]

HTML is not as much of a language as it is a text formatter, indicating changes in font types, sizes, and styles. The main feature of HTML is in its hypertext capability, document text that is in one way or another highlighted to point to another document in a related ...

Get Core Python Programming now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.