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1.1 web -- Web modules

The web module provides some basic utility functions and objects which are used throughout the Web Modules.

Version Information

The web module has the following variables:

web.version_info

A tuple similar to sys.version_info in the form (major version, minor version, revision, release candidate, status)

web.version
The version as a string eg '0.4.0rc1'

web.name
The name of the modules as a string

web.date
The date of the release as a string in the format 'yyyy-mm-dd'.

web.status
The release status of the code. For example 'beta'

Useful Objects

The web module provides the following objects:

web.cgi
An object based on the cgi.FieldStorage() object.

The web.cgi object is used to access CGI environment variables such as information submitted from forms or appended to a URL or information about the user's browser. web.cgi provides a dictionary-like interface to all the sumbitted CGI variables.

Warning: Creating a cgi.FieldStorage object can destroy data that would be used in subsequent creating subsequent cgi.FieldStorage objects so you should only use the web.cgi object which will be created first in order to avoid this problem.

See Also:

cgi Module Documentation
The cgi module documentation distributed with Python has more information about cgi.FieldStorage objects and a full functional specification.

Useful Functions

header( [type='text/html'])

Returns a Content-type HTTP header

type
The content-type to output

encode( html[, mode='url'])

Encode a string for use in an HTML document

html
The string to encode

mode
If mode is 'url' the html string is encoded for use in a URL. If mode is 'form' html is encoded for use in a form field.

Warning: The HTTP protocol doesn't specify the maximum length of URLs but to be absolutely safe try not to let them be longer than 256 characters. Internet Explorer supports URLs of up to 2,083 characters. Any long strings are better off encoded to be put as hidden values in a form with method="POST" rather than encoded and embedded in URLs. Information sent using POST is sent in the HTTP header where there is no limit to the length.

Another reason not to encode larege amounts if information in URLs is that doing so may also result in strange behaviour in certain browsers.

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Documentation released on April 10, 2005.