The cgi Module

The cgi module provides a number of support functions and classes for CGI scripts. Among other things, it can parse CGI form data.

Example 7-40 shows a simple CGI script that returns a list of a files in a given directory (relative to the root directory specified in the script).

Example 7-40. Using the cgi Module

File: cgi-example-1.py

import cgi
import os, urllib

ROOT = "samples"

# header
print "text/html"
print

query = os.environ.get("QUERY_STRING")
if not query:
    query = "."

script = os.environ.get("SCRIPT_NAME", "")
if not script:
    script = "cgi-example-1.py"

print "<html>"
print "<head>"
print "<title>file listing</title>"
print "</head>"
print "</html>"

print "<body>"

try:
    files = os.listdir(os.path.join(ROOT, query))
except os.error:
    files = []

for file in files:
    link = cgi.escape(file)
    if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(ROOT, query, file)):
        href = script + "?" + os.path.join(query, file)
        print "<p><a href= '%s'>%s</a>" % (href, cgi.escape(link))
    else:
        print "<p>%s" % link

print "</body>"
print "</html>"

text/html

<html>
<head>
<title>file listing</title>
</head>
</html>
<body>
<p>sample.gif
<p>sample.gz
<p>sample.netrc
...
<p>sample.txt
<p>sample.xml
<p>sample~
<p><a href='cgi-example-1.py?web'>web</a>
</body>
</html>

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