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- <html><head><title>CGI Environment Variables</title></head><body><h1><img alt="" src="env_files/CGIlogo.gif"> CGI Environment Variables</h1>
- <hr>
- <p>
- In order to pass data about the information request from the server to
- the script, the server uses command line arguments as well as
- environment variables. These environment variables are set when the
- server executes the gateway program. </p><p>
- </p><hr>
- <h2>Specification</h2>
- <p>
- The following environment variables are not request-specific and are
- set for all requests: </p><p>
- </p><ul>
- <li> <code>SERVER_SOFTWARE</code> <p>
- The name and version of the information server software answering
- the request (and running the gateway). Format: name/version </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>SERVER_NAME</code> <p>
- The server's hostname, DNS alias, or IP address as it would appear
- in self-referencing URLs. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>GATEWAY_INTERFACE</code> <p>
- The revision of the CGI specification to which this server
- complies. Format: CGI/revision</p><p>
- </p></li></ul>
- <hr>
- The following environment variables are specific to the request being
- fulfilled by the gateway program: <p>
- </p><ul>
- <li> <a name="protocol"><code>SERVER_PROTOCOL</code></a> <p>
- The name and revision of the information protcol this request came
- in with. Format: protocol/revision </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>SERVER_PORT</code> <p>
- The port number to which the request was sent. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>REQUEST_METHOD</code> <p>
- The method with which the request was made. For HTTP, this is
- "GET", "HEAD", "POST", etc. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>PATH_INFO</code> <p>
- The extra path information, as given by the client. In other
- words, scripts can be accessed by their virtual pathname, followed
- by extra information at the end of this path. The extra
- information is sent as PATH_INFO. This information should be
- decoded by the server if it comes from a URL before it is passed
- to the CGI script.</p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>PATH_TRANSLATED</code> <p>
- The server provides a translated version of PATH_INFO, which takes
- the path and does any virtual-to-physical mapping to it. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>SCRIPT_NAME</code> <p>
- A virtual path to the script being executed, used for
- self-referencing URLs. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <a name="query"><code>QUERY_STRING</code></a> <p>
- The information which follows the ? in the <a href="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/url-primer.html">URL</a>
- which referenced this script. This is the query information. It
- should not be decoded in any fashion. This variable should always
- be set when there is query information, regardless of <a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/cl.html">command line decoding</a>. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>REMOTE_HOST</code> <p>
- The hostname making the request. If the server does not have this
- information, it should set REMOTE_ADDR and leave this unset.</p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>REMOTE_ADDR</code> <p>
- The IP address of the remote host making the request. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>AUTH_TYPE</code> <p>
- If the server supports user authentication, and the script is
- protects, this is the protocol-specific authentication method used
- to validate the user. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>REMOTE_USER</code> <p>
- If the server supports user authentication, and the script is
- protected, this is the username they have authenticated as. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>REMOTE_IDENT</code> <p>
- If the HTTP server supports RFC 931 identification, then this
- variable will be set to the remote user name retrieved from the
- server. Usage of this variable should be limited to logging only.
- </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <a name="ct"><code>CONTENT_TYPE</code></a> <p>
- For queries which have attached information, such as HTTP POST and
- PUT, this is the content type of the data. </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <a name="cl"><code>CONTENT_LENGTH</code></a> <p>
- The length of the said content as given by the client. </p><p>
- </p></li></ul>
- <a name="headers"><hr></a>
- In addition to these, the header lines received from the client, if
- any, are placed into the environment with the prefix HTTP_ followed by
- the header name. Any - characters in the header name are changed to _
- characters. The server may exclude any headers which it has already
- processed, such as Authorization, Content-type, and Content-length. If
- necessary, the server may choose to exclude any or all of these
- headers if including them would exceed any system environment
- limits. <p>
- An example of this is the HTTP_ACCEPT variable which was defined in
- CGI/1.0. Another example is the header User-Agent.</p><p>
- </p><ul>
- <li> <code>HTTP_ACCEPT</code> <p>
- The MIME types which the client will accept, as given by HTTP
- headers. Other protocols may need to get this information from
- elsewhere. Each item in this list should be separated by commas as
- per the HTTP spec. </p><p>
- Format: type/subtype, type/subtype </p><p>
- </p></li><li> <code>HTTP_USER_AGENT</code><p>
- The browser the client is using to send the request. General
- format: <code>software/version library/version</code>.</p><p>
- </p></li></ul>
- <hr>
- <h2>Examples</h2>
- Examples of the setting of environment variables are really much better
- <a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/examples.html">demonstrated</a> than explained. <p>
- </p><hr>
- <a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html"><img alt="[Back]" src="env_files/back.gif">Return to the
- interface specification</a> <p>
- CGI - Common Gateway Interface
- </p><address><a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/mailtocgi.html">cgi@ncsa.uiuc.edu</a></address>
- </body></html>
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