Dynamic Web content and forms processing in Python

This function writes the usual “Content-type” header and blank line, then generates the chapter page according to its database entry. For the generated HTML, see Section 7, “reader.cgi: An example script with cookies”.

# - - -   g e n e r a t e C h a p t e r

def generateChapter ( userRecord ):
    '''Generate the usual HTML displaying one chapter.

      [ dbValue is a string of the form "(chapterNo),(expiration)" ->
          sys.stdout  +:=  (HTML header) + (blank line) +
              (page showing chapter (chapterNo)) ]
    '''

We'll use Section 7.10, “genericPage(): Build a generic Web page” to set up an empty Web page. For the page titles, see Section 7.6.19, “PAGE_TITLE”.

    #-- 1 --
    # [ page  :=  a minimal Web page as an et.ElementTree,
    #       carrying title PAGE_TITLE
    #   body  :=  the body element of that page ]
    page, body  =  genericPage ( PAGE_TITLE )

The form element has all the remaining content; it is created by Section 7.16, “generateForm(): Build the form element”. Writing the headers (see Section 7.6.20, “HTML_HEADER”), and the generated page, works just the same as in Section 7.9, “deletionPage(): Generate the deletion-successful page”.

    #-- 2 --
    # [ body  +:=  a form element displaying the chapter as
    #       specified by userRecord ]
    generateForm ( body, userRecord )

See Section 7.6.20, “HTML_HEADER” and Section 7.6.18, “DOCTYPE: Document type declaration”.

    #-- 3 --
    # [ sys.stdout  +:=  (HTML header) + (blank line) +
    #                    (page as HTML) ]
    print HTML_HEADER
    print
    print DOCTYPE
    page.write ( sys.stdout, pretty_print=True )