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 "

" print "" print "file listing" print "" print "

" print "

" 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 "

<a href="%s">%s</a>" % (href, cgi.escape(link)) else: print "

%s" % link print "" print "" text/html

file listing

sample.gif

sample.gz

sample.netrc ...

sample.txt

sample.xml

sample~

<a href="cgi-example-1.py?web">web</a>