RE: Mixing GET and POST Methods

["Goodbar, Loyd (AFS-Water Valley)" <LGoodbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bad choice of words on my part. I should have said "determined" instead of
"picks one". I used the same type code in CGI programs before converting to
CGIDEV2.

I didn't know it was even possible to mix URI and query string data. Some
languages (PHP comes to mind), can specify an order in which to assign
values to a variable depending on the order of GET, POST, or cookie data.

Loyd

-----Original Message-----
From: Mel Rothman [mailto:mel@rothmanweb.com]
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 11:06 PM
To: WEB400@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Mixing GET and POST Methods


Loyd, you are absolutely right about "You may either use GET *or* POST on a
single request."

However, CGIDEV2 does not "pick" which method to use.  For each request, it
determines whether the request method is GET or POST (by reading the
REQUEST_METHOD environment variable) and performs the appropriate processing
(read CONTENT_LENGTH bytes from standard input if POST; retrieve
QUERY_STRING
environment variable if GET).  Then it makes the input data available to the
program.

It can't be known until run time which method a particular request uses.
For
example, the same CGI program can be called in several ways:

1. Via a form with request method POST (or GET)
2. Via a link in another page, with or without data, in which case the
browser
sends the request as a GET.
3. By the user entering a URL into the browser, again, with or without data.

You can try this yourself with virtually any CGI program written with
CGIDEV2.

It is possible to have data in standard input AND in the QUERY_STRING
environment variable.  I think Chris was referring to this.

For example: 

<form method="post" action="/cgi-bin/programa.pgm?data=hello">
<input type="hidden" name"hide01" value="guess who?"
Other <input> tags
</form>

Standard input contains: hide01=guess+who...data from other tags...
QUERY_STRING contains: data=hello

CGIDEV2's ZhbGetInput subprocedure handles this.  Unfortunately, there
appears
to be a bug in the HTTP server that causes QtmhGetEnv to return QUERY_STRING
as
data=.  I posted a workaround for this bug a few hours ago.

I hope this clarifies the issue for anyone interested in it.

Mel Rothman
CGIDEV2 Author
IBM Rochester
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