How to run CGI "hello world" with python http.server

21
votes

I am using Windows 7 and Python 3.4.3. I would like to run this simple helloworld.py file in my browser:

print('Content-Type: text/html')
print( '<html>')
print( '<head></head>')
print( '<body>')
print( '<h2>Hello World</h2>')
print( '</body></html>')

What I do is:

1) Go to command line C:\Python (where python is installed)

2) run: python -m http.server

3) Got to Firefox and type http://localhost:8000/hello.py

However, instead of "Hello World", the browser just prints the content of the hello.py file.

How can I fix it?

3
pythonhttppython-3.xcgi
your webserver isnt "running python". your python is running a webserver. - TehTris
You should edit your original question instead of just reposting it. - kylieCatt
@IanAuld, my other question was regarding configuring WAMP. This question is regarding http.server. No reposting - this is a different question - Yura
@Yura This tutorial will cover a lot of things but is pretty easy to follow along with. This one is much more basic (and slightly out dated) but will show you the basics. - kylieCatt
By the way you do not type in 'localhost:8000/hello.py' do it WITHOUT 'hello.py' - Tom-Oliver Heidel

3 Answers

22
votes

From the http.server docs:

CGIHTTPRequestHandler can be enabled in the command line by passing the --cgi option:

$ python3 -m http.server --bind localhost --cgi 8000

Put your script into cgi_directories:

This defaults to ['/cgi-bin', '/htbin'] and describes directories to treat as containing CGI scripts.

Open in the browser:

$ python -mwebbrowser http://localhost:8000/cgi-bin/hello.py

where hello.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
print("Content-Type: text/html\n")
print("<!doctype html><title>Hello</title><h2>hello world</h2>")

I had to make it executable on POSIX: chmod +x cgi-bin/hello.py.

3
votes

I created a complete example for a friend. It is a complete demo you can run with 8 simple copy-paste ready lines of code. Enjoy.

echo -e "\n\n    Usage: after running this script, visit http://localhost:8000/cgi-bin/hello    \n\n"
mkdir /tmp/cgi-bin/
cat > /tmp/cgi-bin/hello <<EOF
#!/bin/bash
echo -e "Content-Type: text/plain\n\n"; date; echo; env
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/cgi-bin/hello
(cd /tmp; python3 -m http.server --cgi 8000)
2
votes

I did this some time ago for Python2.7

from BaseHTTPServer import BaseHTTPRequestHandler

class GetHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):

    def do_HEAD(self):
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header("Content-type", "text/html")
        self.end_headers()

    def do_GET(self):
        x = self.wfile.write
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header("Content-type", "text/html")
        self.end_headers()
        # <--- HTML starts here --->
        x("<html>")
        # <--- HEAD starts here --->
        x("<head>")
        x("<title>Title goes here!</title>")
        x("</head>")
        # <--- HEAD ends here --->
        # <--- BODY starts here --->
        x("<body>")
        x("<p>This is a test.</p>")
        x("</body>")
        # <--- BODY ends here --->
        x("</html>")
        # <--- HTML ends here --->

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from BaseHTTPServer import HTTPServer
    server = HTTPServer(('localhost', 777), GetHandler)
    print 'Starting server, use <Ctrl + F2> to stop'
    server.serve_forever()

So in Python 3 you just need to change imports

from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler

class GetHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):

    def do_HEAD(self):
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header("Content-type", "text/html")
        self.end_headers()

    def do_GET(self):
        x = self.wfile.write
        self.send_response(200)
        self.send_header("Content-type", "text/html")
        self.end_headers()
        # <--- HTML starts here --->
        x("<html>")
        # <--- HEAD starts here --->
        x("<head>")
        x("<title>Title goes here!</title>")
        x("</head>")
        # <--- HEAD ends here --->
        # <--- BODY starts here --->
        x("<body>")
        x("<p>This is a test.</p>")
        x("</body>")
        # <--- BODY ends here --->
        x("</html>")
        # <--- HTML ends here --->

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from http.server import HTTPServer
    server = HTTPServer(('localhost', 777), GetHandler)
    print('Starting server, use <Ctrl + F2> to stop')
    server.serve_forever()