150 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
150 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
PEP: 222
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Title: Web Library Enhancements
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Version: $Revision$
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Author: akuchlin@mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
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Status: Active
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Type: Standards Track
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Python-Version: 2.1
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Created: 18-Aug-2000
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Post-History:
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Abstract
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This PEP proposes a set of enhancements to the CGI development
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facilities in the Python standard library. Enhancements might be
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new features, new modules for tasks such as cookie support, or
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removal of obsolete code.
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The intent is to incorporate the proposals emerging from this
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document into Python 2.1, due to be released in the first half of
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2001.
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Proposed Changes
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This section lists changes that have been suggested, but about
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which no firm decision has yet been made. In the final version of
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this PEP, this section should be empty, as all the changes should
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be classified as accepted or rejected.
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fcgi.py : A new module adding support for the FastCGI protocol
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Better debugging support for CGIs from the Unix command line.
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Using Perl's CGI.pm [1], if you run a script from the command
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line, you can enter name=value pairs on standard input.
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cgimodel [2] provides this already.
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Should the existing cgi.py be deprecated and everything moved into
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a 'web' or 'cgi' package? That would allow removing some
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backward-compatibility cruft.
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cgi.py: keep_blank_values should be on by default. The 'if
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form.has_key()/if form[key].value' nested syntax is unnecessarily
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convoluted.
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cgi.py: We should not be told to create our own subclass just so
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we can handle file uploads. As a practical matter, I have yet to
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find the time to do this right, so I end up reading cgi.py's temp
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file into, at best, another file. Some of our legacy code actually
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reads it into a second temp file, then into a final destination!
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And even if we did, that would mean creating yet another object
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with its __init__ call and associated overhead.
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cgi.py: Delete the references to self.lines for file uploads
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cgi.py: Ideally, the pseudo-dictionary syntax would go away. It
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seems to me that the main reason it is there is to accomodate
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form['field'].file syntax. How about the following:
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form['field'] = '' #no values for key
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form['field'] = 'string' #one value in submission for key
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form['field'] = ['string', 'string', ....] #multiple values
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form['field'] = {'fileName':'remote/path',
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'binaryValue':'@UIHJBV29489erht...'} #one file
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form['field'] = [{'fileName':'remote/path',
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'binaryValue':'@UIHJBV29489erht...'},
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{'fileName':'another/path',
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'binaryValue':'7r7w7@@@@'}] #multiple files
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cgi.py: I'd prefer "input" or "submission" for the suggested
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FieldStorage() name. The html page into which the data represented
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by FieldStorage() is input is commonly known as a "form", which
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means that when someone refers to "the form" you aren't always
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sure what they are talking about.
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cgi.py: Allow a combination of query data and POST data.
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Currently, if there is POST data, then any query data encoded in
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the URL is ignored. It would be more convenient if the data from
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those two sources were merged into one dictionary. (XXX but is
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this standard at all?)
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cgi.py: Currently, query data with no `=' are ignored. Even if
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keep_blank_values is set, queries like `...?value=&...' are
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returned with blank values but queries like `...?value&...' are
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completely lost. It would be great if such data were made
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available through the FieldStorage interface, either as entries
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with None as values, or in a separate list.
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Utility function: build a query string from a list of 2-tuples
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Higher-level frameworks: add something like Webware or Zope's
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HTTPReqest/HTTPResponse objects.
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An HTML templating module. (But which one? There's no clear, or
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even vague, indication of which templating module to enshrine.)
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Dictionary-related utility classes: NoKeyErrors (returns an empty
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string, never a KeyError), PartialStringSubstitution (returns
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the original key string, never a KeyError)
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New Modules
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This section lists details about entire new packages or modules
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that should be added to the Python standard library.
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Major Changes to Existing Modules
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This section lists details of major changes to existing modules,
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whether in implementation or in interface. The changes in this
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section therefore carry greater degrees of risk, either in
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introducing bugs or a backward incompatibility.
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Minor Changes to Existing Modules
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This section lists details of minor changes to existing modules.
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These changes should have relatively small implementations, and
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have little risk of introducing incompatibilities with previous
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versions.
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Rejected Changes
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The changes listed in this section were proposed for Python 2.1,
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but were rejected as unsuitable. For each rejected change, a
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rationale is given describing why the change was deemed
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inappropriate.
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Copyright
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This document has been placed in the public domain.
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References and Footnotes
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[1] CGI.pm:
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[2] http://www.embl-heidelberg.de/~chenna/pythonpages/
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Local Variables:
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mode: indented-text
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indent-tabs-mode: nil
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End:
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