20.20. "CGIHTTPServer" — CGI-capable HTTP request handler
*********************************************************

Note: The "CGIHTTPServer" module has been merged into "http.server"
  in Python 3.  The *2to3* tool will automatically adapt imports when
  converting your sources to Python 3.

The "CGIHTTPServer" module defines a request-handler class, interface
compatible with "BaseHTTPServer.BaseHTTPRequestHandler" and inherits
behavior from "SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler" but can also
run CGI scripts.

Note: This module can run CGI scripts on Unix and Windows systems.

Note: CGI scripts run by the "CGIHTTPRequestHandler" class cannot
  execute redirects (HTTP code 302), because code 200 (script output
  follows) is sent prior to execution of the CGI script.  This pre-
  empts the status code.

The "CGIHTTPServer" module defines the following class:

class CGIHTTPServer.CGIHTTPRequestHandler(request, client_address, server)

   This class is used to serve either files or output of CGI scripts
   from  the current directory and below. Note that mapping HTTP
   hierarchic structure to local directory structure is exactly as in
   "SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler".

   The class will however, run the CGI script, instead of serving it
   as a file, if it guesses it to be a CGI script. Only directory-
   based CGI are used — the other common server configuration is to
   treat special extensions as denoting CGI scripts.

   The "do_GET()" and "do_HEAD()" functions are modified to run CGI
   scripts and serve the output, instead of serving files, if the
   request leads to somewhere below the "cgi_directories" path.

   The "CGIHTTPRequestHandler" defines the following data member:

   cgi_directories

      This defaults to "['/cgi-bin', '/htbin']" and describes
      directories to treat as containing CGI scripts.

   The "CGIHTTPRequestHandler" defines the following methods:

   do_POST()

      This method serves the "'POST'" request type, only allowed for
      CGI scripts.  Error 501, “Can only POST to CGI scripts”, is
      output when trying to POST to a non-CGI url.

Note that CGI scripts will be run with UID of user nobody, for
security reasons. Problems with the CGI script will be translated to
error 403.

For example usage, see the implementation of the "test()" function.

See also:

  Module "BaseHTTPServer"
     Base class implementation for Web server and request handler.
