CGI Environment Variables in Python

Python Server Side Programming Programming

All the CGI programs have access to the following environment variables. These variables play an important role while writing any CGI program.

Sr.No.	Variable Name & Description
1	CONTENT_TYPE The data type of the content. Used when the client is sending attached content to the server. For example, file upload.
2	CONTENT_LENGTH The length of the query information. It is available only for POST requests.
3	HTTP_COOKIE Returns the set cookies in the form of key & value pair.
4	HTTP_USER_AGENT The User-Agent request-header field contains information about the user agent originating the request. It is name of the web browser.
5	PATH_INFO The path for the CGI script.
6	QUERY_STRING The URL-encoded information that is sent with GET method request.
7	REMOTE_ADDR The IP address of the remote host making the request. This is useful logging or for authentication.
8	REMOTE_HOST The fully qualified name of the host making the request. If this information is not available, then REMOTE_ADDR can be used to get IR address.
9	REQUEST_METHOD The method used to make the request. The most common methods are GET and POST.
10	SCRIPT_FILENAME The full path to the CGI script.
11	SCRIPT_NAME The name of the CGI script.
12	SERVER_NAME The server's hostname or IP Address
13	SERVER_SOFTWARE The name and version of the software the server is running.

Here is small CGI program to list out all the CGI variables.

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
print "Content-type: text/html\r\n\r\n";
print "<font size=+1>Environment</font><\br>";
for param in os.environ.keys():
   print "<b>%20s</b>: %s<\br>" % (param, os.environ[param])

Mohd Mohtashim

Updated on: 31-Jan-2020

1K+ Views

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