http.server.CGIHTTPRequestHandler

class http.server.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 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 method:

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.