cgi.rb - cgi support library

Copyright (C) 2000 Network Applied Communication Laboratory, Inc.

Copyright (C) 2000 Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan

Author: Wakou Aoyama <wakou@ruby-lang.org>

Documentation: Wakou Aoyama (RDoc'd and embellished by William Webber)

Overview

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a simple protocol for passing an HTTP request from a web server to a standalone program, and returning the output to the web browser. Basically, a CGI program is called with the parameters of the request passed in either in the environment (GET) or via $stdin (POST), and everything it prints to $stdout is returned to the client.

This file holds the CGI class. This class provides functionality for retrieving HTTP request parameters, managing cookies, and generating HTML output. See the class documentation for more details and examples of use.

The file cgi/session.rb provides session management functionality; see that file for more details.

See www.w3.org/CGI/ for more information on the CGI protocol.