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Hi,
I wrote a patch for the cgi module in version 3.2rc1 (#4953). Small changes should be done to the documentation of this module to reflect the changes in the module API :
- in section "20.2.2. Using the cgi module"
original text :
"If a field represents an uploaded file, accessing the value via the value attribute or the getvalue() method reads the entire file in memory as a string. This may not be what you want. You can test for an uploaded file by testing either the filename attribute or the file attribute. You can then read the data at leisure from the file attribute:"
proposed new text (for files, value is bytes, not string, and the read() method on file also returns bytes) :
"If a field represents an uploaded file, accessing the value via the value attribute or the getvalue() method reads the entire file in memory as bytes. This may not be what you want. You can test for an uploaded file by testing either the filename attribute or the file attribute. You can then read the data at leisure from the file attribute (the read() and readline() methods will return bytes) :"
- version 3.2 introduced a parameter "encoding" for the FieldStorage constructor, used to decode the bytes received on the HTTP connection for fields other than files. This encoding must the one defined in the HTML document holding the form submitted to the CGI script ; it is usually defined by a meta tag :
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=latin-1">
or by the Content-Type header for this document
I'm not sure where this should be mentioned in the module documentation. Maybe in "20.2.9. Common problems and solutions" for the moment. But there are plans (#11066) to introduce another interface to change the encoding of sys.stdout in the CGI script itself, so another option would be to open a specific section about encodings
Hope it's clear enough
Pierre

"bug", not "buf"...

What is the reason for this one to languish for over a year now? Lack of proper patch? It’s marked "high priority", so let’s get moving.

> What is the reason for this one to languish for over a year now?
Maybe because few people are concerned by the cgi module?
> Lack of proper patch?
It would help to have a patch attached to the issue, and a review of the patch.

Thanks Hynek for raising this issue from the dead
Patch proposal attached. Sorry if there are markup errors, it's my first contact with rst

That’s not a patch. :) Posting whole files makes them very hard to review because you can’t spot the changes.
The best thing would be to get a fresh clone of the repo: http://docs.python.org/devguide/setup.html#setup , copy your edited file to the appropriate place and run `hg diff`.
If it looks okay, redirect the output into a file (something like `hg diff >cgi-doc-update.patch`) and attach it to this issue.

Sorry about that. I didn't dare to say I was also a Mercurial newbie

Not to worry about that Pierre. I shall review the patch (contents) in
the evening (SGT) and I should be able to commit/close this issue.
Thanks,
Senthil

Thanks Senthil
I spot a typo in the first modified paragraph : "cet" instead of "set"

New changeset a54b6e321f1c by Senthil Kumaran in branch '3.2':
Issue11352 - Update cgi module docs
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/a54b6e321f1c
New changeset 910a4b12c796 by Senthil Kumaran in branch 'default':
Issue11352 - Update cgi module docs
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/910a4b12c796 

I have made the suggested specific changes, but while reviewing the entire doc, I realized that much improvements can be made. Keeping the documentation more helpful aligned with the cgi.py APIs. I shall keep bug report to update the cgi docs further.

Hi,
I started working on a revised version of the whole cgi documentation. I mostly changed paragraphs 2 & 3 ("Using the CGI module" and "Higher level interface") and replaced them by a paragraph still called "Using the CGI module" + 2 other paragraphs for special cases : "Multiple fields with the same name" and "File uploads"
The content is basically the same but the new presentation is hopefully more clear
The patch is attached as file cgi-doc.patch

I attach a new version after sharing thought with Glenn
CGI scripts are still unable to define which encoding to use to print the strings received from the user agent. A patch was proposed #11066 but the issue is still pending. The new version documents this issue

What is the status of this?
Have any of the changes been applied?
Are any of the other patches still appropriate?
Is this now dependent on any other issues/any non-doc updates?

> Have any of the changes been applied?
A modified version of cgi-doc-update.patch was committed. (see msg159700)
I left a couple of comments for cgi-doc.patch on Rietveld.

I have now also looked at cgi-doc.patch, and it is not strictly documentation changes. I have no informed opinion on the the additional changes, but I don't think they should go in as "doc change".

It looks like the non-doc stuff was accidental inclusions and should be ignored. Or better, the patch author could address Berker and Jim's comments and resubmit a clean patch.

@Pierre can you submit a clean patch as requested in msg214267?

Hi
I've modified Pierre's patch to apply to the latest 3.5 and 3.4, and made the most of the simple changes suggested in http://bugs.python.org/review/11352/#ps4792 . I've also added all the non internal parameters to the FieldStorage constructor, and descriptions of them.
Thanks,
Matt

Since there was no activity on this for 6-7 years and it's not describing a specific issue, I will close this in a couple of weeks unless someone asks me not to.

Seems like another example of the CGI module not getting much support. While I haven't looked at all the details of the patches, it seems that several people have contributed enhancements or clarifications. and it would be a shame to discard them rather than merge the submissions... but it seems no one with authority wants to support CGI.

Would you like to work on a GitHub PR with these changes?

First I would have to learn how GitHub works, and how PRs work. And I haven't found time for that, as yet.

Marking as easy. What needs to be done here is to review the patches and see if there are any doc improvements in them worth having. Then make a PR.

i am working on it. will submit a PR soon.

cgi is deprecated as per PEP 594, so there won't be further enhancements to it.