Sending HTML POST data to a Python script

Question

I want to post data to a python script using a basic html form. My background is PHP and that's super easy with the $_POST superglobal. However, after hours of googling and YouTube, I'm still no closer. I've tried the Requests library but I want to RECEIVE information, not send it. I know I can probally use Flask but I would rather not have a framework. Is there a python equivalent to a superglobal?

Basically, I have an html form like,

<form method="post" name="MyFrom" action="data.php">
<input name="Data" type="text">
<input name="Submit1" type="submit" value="submit">
</form>

The data.php looks like,

<?php
echo '<pre>';
print_r($_POST);
echo '</pre>';
?>

Which prints out... Array ( [Data] => 123 [Submit1] => submit ) ... and the "Data" value I can then assign to a variable and use latter down the script. Basically, I want a Python file (like data.py) that can understand the incoming post data.

• C.Nivs: Are you trying to render the HTML using python? And then put information into your html page that python can consume?
• James: No. The HTML will POST the data TO the Python script.
• C.Nivs: I think the python process needs to be reading from a socket/web-address for that to occur. The HTML is doing an http post to an arbitrary address (best I can tell). You'd need python to be running a basic HTTP server and the url of that server is what your html posts to
• C.Nivs: You are in need of some sort of backend to make this work, Flask is a framework that enables this, and there are many others (django, bottle, etc). If you're looking for a built in, simple one, the http module can be of help
• James: I have Apache2.4 configured for my PHP app and added the CGI for python and now can run Python scripts from the web browser. Just missing a way to send information to the script.

Answer 1

While frameworks that run on WSGI, such as Flask, are much more suitable for building complex applications, a simple Python CGI script comes close to the way that PHP works.

form.html

<form method="post" name="MyFrom" action="/cgi-bin/data.py">
<input name="Data" type="text">
<input name="Submit1" type="submit" value="submit">
</form>

cgi-bin/data.py (don't forget to mark as executable)

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import cgi
print("Content-type:text/html\r\n\r\n")
print('<pre>')
form = cgi.FieldStorage()
for var in form:
 print("field:", var)
 print("value:", form[var].value)
print('</pre>')

You can test it using python3 -m http.server --cgi 8000 or install a full webserver like Apache with the CGI module.