Passing Information Using POST Method in Python

Python Server Side Programming Programming

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.

Example

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>"

Output

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.