5. anyform.cgi: An example CGI script to show all form data

5. `anyform.cgi`: An example CGI script to show all form data

Here is an example of a working CGI script, anyform.cgi. It is intended to display all the data from an arbitrary form. The example form in Section 3.1, “Linking a form to a CGI script” uses this script as its handler.

5.1. XHTML to be generated

First let's look at the HTML we want to generate. Suppose a form has two controls: a text field named 'home' containing the string 'Eagles', and a multiple select menu named 'visitors' with two values: 'Animal Angst Project' and 'Bovine Wonder Horde'.

For simplicity, we'll use the .getlist() method on the FieldStorage instance to get any number of values for each control. Then we'll concatenate the values inside square brackets, with commas between them. Here's the output:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Form output test</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Form output test</h1>
    <div>home=[Eagles]</div>
    <div>visitor=[Animal Angst Project, Bovine Wonder Horde]</div>
  </body>
</html>

Dynamic Web content and forms processing in Python