CGI Script Input

With annotations for the Windows/DOS environment

Specification

For requests which have information attached after the header, such as HTTP POST or PUT, the information will be sent to the script on stdin.

The server will send CONTENT_LENGTH bytes on this file descriptor. Remember that it will give the CONTENT_TYPE of the data as well. The server is in no way obligated to send end-of-file after the script reads CONTENT_LENGTH bytes.

Windows Only - The Windows httpd server creates the file CONTENT_FILE which contains the content bytes. It is accessible to the script directly as well as via stdin. The file is exactly CONTENT_LENGTH bytes in length.

Example

Let's take a form with METHOD="POST" as an example. Let's say the form results are 7 bytes encoded, and look like a=b&b=c.

In this case, the server will set CONTENT_LENGTH to 7 and CONTENT_TYPE to application/x-www-form-urlencoded. The first byte on the script's standard input will be "a", followed by the rest of the encoded string.

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Robert B. Denny <rdenny@netcom.com>