CGI Scripts & "On-the-fly" conversion

CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. Basically, CGI is an interface for running external programs under an HTTP information server.

Gateways are programs which handle information requests and return the appropriate document or generate a document on the fly.

HTTP Servers often allocate special URLs for specific types of files. The most important one is /cgi-bin. This is used to reference the `server scripts' directory -- this is the directory that contains scripts and programs that can be accessed from the browsers, via an HREF. For example, to access the script `phone' (which scans a phonebook for particular names) on the machine `www.foo.com' via http, the HREF is

HREF="http://www.foo.com/cgi-bin/phone"

The URL to access the UCI-NACS' Zot-Dispatch form handling script is

HREF="/cgi-bin/zd.cgi"
Here are some references to gateway packages.

For more information consult you local httpd server documentation.


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