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What is the difference between GET and POST in Python CGI Programming?
GET and POST Methods
You must have come across many situations when you need to pass some information from your browser to web server and ultimately to your CGI Program. Most frequently, browser uses two methods two pass this information to web server. These methods are GET Method and POST Method.
Passing Information using GET method
The GET method sends the encoded user information appended to the page request. The page and the encoded information are separated by the ? character as follows −
http://www.test.com/cgi-bin/hello.py?key1=value1&key2=value2
The GET method is the default method to pass information from browser to web server and it produces a long string that appears in your browser's Location:box. Never use GET method if you have password or other sensitive information to pass to the server. The GET method has size limitation: only 1024 characters can be sent in a request string. The GET method sends information using QUERY_STRING header and will be accessible in your CGI Program through QUERY_STRING environment variable.
You can pass information by simply concatenating key and value pairs along with any URL or you can use HTML <FORM> tags to pass information using GET method.
Simple URL Example − Get Method
Here is a simple URL, which passes two values to hello_get.py program using GET method.
/cgi-bin/hello_get.py?first_name=ZARA&last_name=ALI
Below is hello_get.py script to handle input given by web browser. We are going to use cgi module, which makes it very easy to access passed information −
#!/usr/bin/python
# Import modules for CGI handling
import cgi, cgitb
# Create instance of FieldStorage
form = cgi.FieldStorage()
# Get data from fields
first_name = form.getvalue('first_name')
last_name = form.getvalue('last_name')
print "Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n"
print "<html>"
print "<head>"
print "<title>Hello - Second CGI Program</title>"
print "</head>"
print "<body>"
print "<h2>Hello %s %s</h2>" % (first_name, last_name)
print "</body>"
print "</html>"This would generate the following result −
Hello ZARA ALI
Simple FORM Example − GET Method
This example passes two values using HTML FORM and submit button. We use same CGI script hello_get.py to handle this input.
<form action = "/cgi-bin/hello_get.py" method = "get"> First Name: <input type = "text" name = "first_name"> <br /> Last Name: <input type = "text" name = "last_name" /> <input type = "submit" value = "Submit" /> </form>
Here is the actual output of the above form, you enter First and Last Name and then click submit button to see the result.
First Name: Last Name: Submit
Passing Information Using POST Method
A generally more reliable method of passing information to a CGI program is the POST method. This packages the information in exactly the same way as GET methods, but instead of sending it as a text string after a ? in the URL it sends it as a separate message. This message comes into the CGI script in the form of the standard input.
Below is same hello_get.py script which handles GET as well as POST method.
#!/usr/bin/python
# Import modules for CGI handling
import cgi, cgitb
# Create instance of FieldStorage
form = cgi.FieldStorage()
# Get data from fields
first_name = form.getvalue('first_name')
last_name = form.getvalue('last_name')
print "Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n"
print "<html>"
print "<head>"
print "<title>Hello - Second CGI Program</title>"
print "</head>"
print "<body>"
print "<h2>Hello %s %s</h2>" % (first_name, last_name)
print "</body>"
print "</html>"Let us take again same example as above which passes two values using HTML FORM and submit button. We use same CGI script hello_get.py to handle this input.
<form action = "/cgi-bin/hello_get.py" method = "post"> First Name: <input type = "text" name = "first_name"><br /> Last Name: <input type = "text" name = "last_name" /> <input type = "submit" value = "Submit" /> </form>
Here is the actual output of the above form. You enter First and Last Name and then click submit button to see the result.
First Name: Last Name: Submit
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