Mailing List Archive

> The cgi module in Python 1.5.2 sets the content-type to
> application/x-www-form-urlencoded when no content-type header is
> provided. This is an error. It is legal for HTTP requests to
> ommit this header and most (or at least the most widely used ;)
> clients don't include a content type in PUT requests, which are
> used by many publishing tools.
>
> I've attached a context diff that fixes this problem.

Jim,

I don't know how you found the python-bugs mailing address -- it's
best not to use it until we announce it. Our Jitterbug experiments
are still in a very early phase (if you have a better solution for bug
tracking e.g. whatever you use for Zope, I'd appreciate trying it
out...).

In response to your problem report, the situation is more complicated
than you think. Classically, cgi.py is used only to handle GET and
POST requests (not PUT) and for POST, unfortunately there are clients
out there that send a POST command with urlencoded data without a
content-type header. The code in 1.5.1 always defaulted to text/plain
(as your proposed fix does), but this caused problems when a POST
request forgot the content-type header. (Unfortunately I've forgotten
who reported this -- perhaps it was Mike Meyer. This is why we need a
bug tracking system!) Anyway it has been in 1.5.2b2 and c1 (Yes, I
know you were too busy to try those out.)

Would it help if I changed the code so that urlencoded is only used as
the default when there is no outer boundary *and* the method is POST?

Like this:

Index: cgi.py
===================================================================
RCS file: /projects/cvsroot/python/dist/src/Lib/cgi.py,v
retrieving revision 1.42
diff -c -r1.42 cgi.py
*** cgi.py 1999/01/08 17:42:03 1.42
--- cgi.py 1999/06/01 21:13:15
***************
*** 841,847 ****
# but it happens to be something we don't understand.
if self.headers.has_key('content-type'):
ctype, pdict = parse_header(self.headers['content-type'])
! elif self.outerboundary:
ctype, pdict = "text/plain", {}
else:
ctype, pdict = 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded', {}
--- 841,847 ----
# but it happens to be something we don't understand.
if self.headers.has_key('content-type'):
ctype, pdict = parse_header(self.headers['content-type'])
! elif self.outerboundary or method != 'POST':
ctype, pdict = "text/plain", {}
else:
ctype, pdict = 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded', {}

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)