The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Version 1.1
RFC 3875
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RFC - Informational
(October 2004; Errata)
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2013-03-20
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ISE
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RFC 3875 (Informational)
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Responsible AD |
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Ted Hardie
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Network Working Group D. Robinson
Request for Comments: 3875 K. Coar
Category: Informational The Apache Software Foundation
October 2004
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Version 1.1
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).
IESG Note
This document is not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard.
The IETF disclaims any knowledge of the fitness of this document for
any purpose, and in particular notes that it has not had IETF review
for such things as security, congestion control or inappropriate
interaction with deployed protocols. The RFC Editor has chosen to
publish this document at its discretion. Readers of this document
should exercise caution in evaluating its value for implementation
and deployment.
Abstract
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a simple interface for running
external programs, software or gateways under an information server
in a platform-independent manner. Currently, the supported
information servers are HTTP servers.
The interface has been in use by the World-Wide Web (WWW) since 1993.
This specification defines the 'current practice' parameters of the
'CGI/1.1' interface developed and documented at the U.S. National
Centre for Supercomputing Applications. This document also defines
the use of the CGI/1.1 interface on UNIX(R) and other, similar
systems.
Robinson & Coar Informational [Page 1]
RFC 3875 CGI Version 1.1 October 2004
Table of Contents
1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Notational Conventions and Generic Grammar. . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Augmented BNF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2. Basic Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3. URL Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. Invoking the Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1. Server Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2. Script Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3. The Script-URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4. Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4. The CGI Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1. Request Meta-Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1.1. AUTH_TYPE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1.2. CONTENT_LENGTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.3. CONTENT_TYPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.1.4. GATEWAY_INTERFACE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.1.5. PATH_INFO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.1.6. PATH_TRANSLATED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.1.7. QUERY_STRING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.1.8. REMOTE_ADDR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.1.9. REMOTE_HOST. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.1.10. REMOTE_IDENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.1.11. REMOTE_USER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.1.12. REQUEST_METHOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.13. SCRIPT_NAME. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.14. SERVER_NAME. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.15. SERVER_PORT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.1.16. SERVER_PROTOCOL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.1.17. SERVER_SOFTWARE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.1.18. Protocol-Specific Meta-Variables . . . . . . . . 19
4.2. Request Message-Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3. Request Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3.1. GET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3.2. POST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.3.3. HEAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.3.4. Protocol-Specific Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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