phpman > perldoc > CGI

NAME
    CGI - Handle Common Gateway Interface requests and responses

SYNOPSIS
        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI;

            # create a CGI object (query) for use
        my $q = CGI->new;

        # Process an HTTP request
        my @values  = $q->multi_param('form_field');
        my $value   = $q->param('param_name');

        my $fh      = $q->upload('file_field');

        my $riddle  = $q->cookie('riddle_name');
        my %answers = $q->cookie('answers');

        # Prepare various HTTP responses
        print $q->header();
        print $q->header('application/json');

        my $cookie1 = $q->cookie(
            -name  => 'riddle_name',
            -value => "The Sphynx's Question"
        );

        my $cookie2 = $q->cookie(
            -name  => 'answers',
            -value => \%answers
        );

        print $q->header(
            -type    => 'image/gif',
            -expires => '+3d',
            -cookie  => [ $cookie1,$cookie2 ]
        );

        print $q->redirect('http://somewhere.else/in/movie/land');

DESCRIPTION
    CGI.pm is a stable, complete and mature solution for processing and preparing HTTP requests and
    responses. Major features including processing form submissions, file uploads, reading and
    writing cookies, query string generation and manipulation, and processing and preparing HTTP
    headers.

    CGI.pm performs very well in a vanilla CGI.pm environment and also comes with built-in support
    for mod_perl and mod_perl2 as well as FastCGI.

    It has the benefit of having developed and refined over 20 years with input from dozens of
    contributors and being deployed on thousands of websites. CGI.pm was included in the perl
    distribution from perl v5.4 to v5.20, however is has now been removed from the perl core...

CGI.pm HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE PERL CORE
    <http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/commitdiff/e9fa5a80>

    If you upgrade to a new version of perl or if you rely on a system or vendor perl and get an
    updated version of perl through a system update, then you will have to install CGI.pm yourself
    with cpan/cpanm/a vendor package/manually. To make this a little easier the CGI::Fast module has
    been split into its own distribution, meaning you do not need access to a compiler to install
    CGI.pm

    The rationale for this decision is that CGI.pm is no longer considered good practice for
    developing web applications, including quick prototyping and small web scripts. There are far
    better, cleaner, quicker, easier, safer, more scalable, more extensible, more modern
    alternatives available at this point in time. These will be documented with CGI::Alternatives.

    For more discussion on the removal of CGI.pm from core please see:

    <http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/05/msg202130.html>

    Note that the v4 releases of CGI.pm will retain back compatibility as much as possible, however
    you may need to make some minor changes to your code if you are using deprecated methods or some
    of the more obscure features of the module. If you plan to upgrade to v4.00 and beyond you
    should read the Changes file for more information and test your code against CGI.pm before
    deploying it.

HTML Generation functions should no longer be used
    All HTML generation functions within CGI.pm are no longer being maintained. Any issues, bugs, or
    patches will be rejected unless they relate to fundamentally broken page rendering.

    The rationale for this is that the HTML generation functions of CGI.pm are an obfuscation at
    best and a maintenance nightmare at worst. You should be using a template engine for better
    separation of concerns. See CGI::Alternatives for an example of using CGI.pm with the
    Template::Toolkit module.

    These functions, and perldoc for them, are considered deprecated, they are no longer being
    maintained and no fixes or features for them will be accepted. They will, however, continue to
    exist in CGI.pm without any deprecation warnings ("soft" deprecation) so you can continue to use
    them if you really want to. All documentation for these functions has been moved to
    CGI::HTML::Functions.

Programming style
    There are two styles of programming with CGI.pm, an object-oriented (OO) style and a
    function-oriented style. You are recommended to use the OO style as CGI.pm will create an
    internal default object when the functions are called procedurally and you will not have to
    worry about method names clashing with perl builtins.

    In the object-oriented style you create one or more CGI objects and then use object methods to
    create the various elements of the page. Each CGI object starts out with the list of named
    parameters that were passed to your CGI script by the server. You can modify the objects, save
    them to a file or database and recreate them. Because each object corresponds to the "state" of
    the CGI script, and because each object's parameter list is independent of the others, this
    allows you to save the state of the script and restore it later.

    For example, using the object oriented style:

        #!/usr/bin/env perl

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI;                             # load CGI routines

        my $q = CGI->new;                    # create new CGI object
        print $q->header;                    # create the HTTP header

    In the function-oriented style, there is one default CGI object that you rarely deal with
    directly. Instead you just call functions to retrieve CGI parameters, manage cookies, and so on.
    The following example is identical to above, in terms of output, but uses the function-oriented
    interface. The main differences are that we now need to import a set of functions into our name
    space (usually the "standard" functions), and we don't need to create the CGI object.

        #!/usr/bin/env perl

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI qw/:standard/;           # load standard CGI routines
        print header();                  # create the HTTP header

    The examples in this document mainly use the object-oriented style. See HOW TO IMPORT FUNCTIONS
    for important information on function-oriented programming in CGI.pm

  Calling CGI.pm routines
    Most CGI.pm routines accept several arguments, sometimes as many as 20 optional ones! To
    simplify this interface, all routines use a named argument calling style that looks like this:

        print $q->header(
            -type    => 'image/gif',
            -expires => '+3d',
        );

    Each argument name is preceded by a dash. Neither case nor order matters in the argument list:
    -type, -Type, and -TYPE are all acceptable. In fact, only the first argument needs to begin with
    a dash. If a dash is present in the first argument CGI.pm assumes dashes for the subsequent
    ones.

    Several routines are commonly called with just one argument. In the case of these routines you
    can provide the single argument without an argument name. header() happens to be one of these
    routines. In this case, the single argument is the document type.

        print $q->header('text/html');

    Other such routines are documented below.

    Sometimes named arguments expect a scalar, sometimes a reference to an array, and sometimes a
    reference to a hash. Often, you can pass any type of argument and the routine will do whatever
    is most appropriate. For example, the param() routine is used to set a CGI parameter to a single
    or a multi-valued value. The two cases are shown below:

        $q->param(
            -name  => 'veggie',
            -value => 'tomato',
        );

        $q->param(
            -name  => 'veggie',
            -value => [ qw/tomato tomahto potato potahto/ ],
        );

    Many routines will do something useful with a named argument that it doesn't recognize. For
    example, you can produce non-standard HTTP header fields by providing them as named arguments:

        print $q->header(
            -type            => 'text/html',
            -cost            => 'Three smackers',
            -annoyance_level => 'high',
            -complaints_to   => 'bit bucket',
        );

    This will produce the following nonstandard HTTP header:

        HTTP/1.0 200 OK
        Cost: Three smackers
        Annoyance-level: high
        Complaints-to: bit bucket
        Content-type: text/html

    Notice the way that underscores are translated automatically into hyphens.

  Creating a new query object (object-oriented style)
        my $q = CGI->new;

    This will parse the input (from POST, GET and DELETE methods) and store it into a perl5 object
    called $q. Note that because the input parsing happens at object instantiation you have to set
    any CGI package variables that control parsing before you call CGI->new.

    Any filehandles from file uploads will have their position reset to the beginning of the file.

  Creating a new query object from an input file
        my $q = CGI->new( $input_filehandle );

    If you provide a file handle to the new() method, it will read parameters from the file (or
    STDIN, or whatever). The file can be in any of the forms describing below under debugging (i.e.
    a series of newline delimited TAG=VALUE pairs will work). Conveniently, this type of file is
    created by the save() method (see below). Multiple records can be saved and restored.

    Perl purists will be pleased to know that this syntax accepts references to file handles, or
    even references to filehandle globs, which is the "official" way to pass a filehandle. You can
    also initialize the CGI object with a FileHandle or IO::File object.

    If you are using the function-oriented interface and want to initialize CGI state from a file
    handle, the way to do this is with restore_parameters(). This will (re)initialize the default
    CGI object from the indicated file handle.

        open( my $in_fh,'<',"test.in") || die "Couldn't open test.in for read: $!";
        restore_parameters( $in_fh );
        close( $in_fh );

    You can also initialize the query object from a hash reference:

        my $q = CGI->new( {
            'dinosaur' => 'barney',
            'song'     => 'I love you',
            'friends'  => [ qw/ Jessica George Nancy / ]
        } );

    or from a properly formatted, URL-escaped query string:

        my $q = CGI->new('dinosaur=barney&color=purple');

    or from a previously existing CGI object (currently this clones the parameter list, but none of
    the other object-specific fields, such as autoescaping):

        my $old_query = CGI->new;
        my $new_query = CGI->new($old_query);

    To create an empty query, initialize it from an empty string or hash:

        my $empty_query = CGI->new("");

           -or-

        my $empty_query = CGI->new({});

  Fetching a list of keywords from the query
        my @keywords = $q->keywords

    If the script was invoked as the result of an ISINDEX search, the parsed keywords can be
    obtained as an array using the keywords() method.

  Fetching the names of all the parameters passed to your script
        my @names = $q->multi_param

        my @names = $q->param

    If the script was invoked with a parameter list (e.g. "name1=value1&name2=value2&name3=value3"),
    the param() / multi_param() methods will return the parameter names as a list. If the script was
    invoked as an ISINDEX script and contains a string without ampersands (e.g.
    "value1+value2+value3"), there will be a single parameter named "keywords" containing the
    "+"-delimited keywords.

    The array of parameter names returned will be in the same order as they were submitted by the
    browser. Usually this order is the same as the order in which the parameters are defined in the
    form (however, this isn't part of the spec, and so isn't guaranteed).

  Fetching the value or values of a single named parameter
        my @values = $q->multi_param('foo');

            -or-

        my $value = $q->param('foo');

            -or-

        my @values = $q->param('foo'); # list context, discouraged and will raise
                                       # a warning (use ->multi_param instead)

    Pass the param() / multi_param() method a single argument to fetch the value of the named
    parameter. When calling param() If the parameter is multivalued (e.g. from multiple selections
    in a scrolling list), you can ask to receive an array. Otherwise the method will return the
    first value.

    Warning - calling param() in list context can lead to vulnerabilities if you do not sanitise
    user input as it is possible to inject other param keys and values into your code. This is why
    the multi_param() method exists, to make it clear that a list is being returned, note that
    param() can still be called in list context and will return a list for back compatibility.

    The following code is an example of a vulnerability as the call to param will be evaluated in
    list context and thus possibly inject extra keys and values into the hash:

        my %user_info = (
            id   => 1,
            name => $q->param('name'),
        );

    The fix for the above is to force scalar context on the call to ->param by prefixing it with
    "scalar"

        name => scalar $q->param('name'),

    If you call param() in list context with an argument a warning will be raised by CGI.pm, you can
    disable this warning by setting $CGI::LIST_CONTEXT_WARN to 0 or by using the multi_param()
    method instead

    If a value is not given in the query string, as in the queries "name1=&name2=", it will be
    returned as an empty string.

    If the parameter does not exist at all, then param() will return undef in scalar context, and
    the empty list in a list context.

  Setting the value(s) of a named parameter
        $q->param('foo','an','array','of','values');

    This sets the value for the named parameter 'foo' to an array of values. This is one way to
    change the value of a field AFTER the script has been invoked once before.

    param() also recognizes a named parameter style of calling described in more detail later:

        $q->param(
            -name   => 'foo',
            -values => ['an','array','of','values'],
        );

                    -or-

        $q->param(
            -name  => 'foo',
            -value => 'the value',
        );

  Appending additional values to a named parameter
        $q->append(
            -name   =>'foo',
            -values =>['yet','more','values'],
        );

    This adds a value or list of values to the named parameter. The values are appended to the end
    of the parameter if it already exists. Otherwise the parameter is created. Note that this method
    only recognizes the named argument calling syntax.

  Importing all parameters into a namespace
        $q->import_names('R');

    This creates a series of variables in the 'R' namespace. For example, $R::foo, @R:foo. For
    keyword lists, a variable @R::keywords will appear. If no namespace is given, this method will
    assume 'Q'. WARNING: don't import anything into 'main'; this is a major security risk!

    NOTE 1: Variable names are transformed as necessary into legal perl variable names. All
    non-legal characters are transformed into underscores. If you need to keep the original names,
    you should use the param() method instead to access CGI variables by name.

    In fact, you should probably not use this method at all given the above caveats and security
    risks.

  Deleting a parameter completely
        $q->delete('foo','bar','baz');

    This completely clears a list of parameters. It sometimes useful for resetting parameters that
    you don't want passed down between script invocations.

    If you are using the function call interface, use "Delete()" instead to avoid conflicts with
    perl's built-in delete operator.

  Deleting all parameters
        $q->delete_all();

    This clears the CGI object completely. It might be useful to ensure that all the defaults are
    taken when you create a fill-out form.

    Use Delete_all() instead if you are using the function call interface.

  Handling non-urlencoded arguments
    If POSTed data is not of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data, then the
    POSTed data will not be processed, but instead be returned as-is in a parameter named POSTDATA.
    To retrieve it, use code like this:

        my $data = $q->param('POSTDATA');

    Likewise if PUTed and PATCHed data can be retrieved with code like this:

        my $data = $q->param('PUTDATA');

        my $data = $q->param('PATCHDATA');

    (If you don't know what the preceding means, worry not. It only affects people trying to use CGI
    for XML processing and other specialized tasks)

    PUTDATA/POSTDATA/PATCHDATA are also available via upload_hook, and as file uploads via
    "-putdata_upload" option.

  Direct access to the parameter list
        $q->param_fetch('address')->[1] = '1313 Mockingbird Lane';
        unshift @{$q->param_fetch(-name=>'address')},'George Munster';

    If you need access to the parameter list in a way that isn't covered by the methods given in the
    previous sections, you can obtain a direct reference to it by calling the param_fetch() method
    with the name of the parameter. This will return an array reference to the named parameter,
    which you then can manipulate in any way you like.

    You can also use a named argument style using the -name argument.

  Fetching the parameter list as a hash
        my $params = $q->Vars;
        print $params->{'address'};
        my @foo = split("\0",$params->{'foo'});
        my %params = $q->Vars;

        use CGI ':cgi-lib';
        my $params = Vars();

    Many people want to fetch the entire parameter list as a hash in which the keys are the names of
    the CGI parameters, and the values are the parameters' values. The Vars() method does this.
    Called in a scalar context, it returns the parameter list as a tied hash reference. Changing a
    key changes the value of the parameter in the underlying CGI parameter list. Called in a list
    context, it returns the parameter list as an ordinary hash. This allows you to read the contents
    of the parameter list, but not to change it.

    When using this, the thing you must watch out for are multivalued CGI parameters. Because a hash
    cannot distinguish between scalar and list context, multivalued parameters will be returned as a
    packed string, separated by the "\0" (null) character. You must split this packed string in
    order to get at the individual values. This is the convention introduced long ago by Steve
    Brenner in his cgi-lib.pl module for perl version 4, and may be replaced in future versions with
    array references.

    If you wish to use Vars() as a function, import the *:cgi-lib* set of function calls (also see
    the section on CGI-LIB compatibility).

  Saving the state of the script to a file
        $q->save(\*FILEHANDLE)

    This will write the current state of the form to the provided filehandle. You can read it back
    in by providing a filehandle to the new() method. Note that the filehandle can be a file, a
    pipe, or whatever.

    The format of the saved file is:

        NAME1=VALUE1
        NAME1=VALUE1'
        NAME2=VALUE2
        NAME3=VALUE3
        =

    Both name and value are URL escaped. Multi-valued CGI parameters are represented as repeated
    names. A session record is delimited by a single = symbol. You can write out multiple records
    and read them back in with several calls to new. You can do this across several sessions by
    opening the file in append mode, allowing you to create primitive guest books, or to keep a
    history of users' queries. Here's a short example of creating multiple session records:

        use strict;
        use warnings;
        use CGI;

        open (my $out_fh,'>>','test.out') || die "Can't open test.out: $!";
        my $records = 5;
        for ( 0 .. $records ) {
            my $q = CGI->new;
            $q->param( -name => 'counter',-value => $_ );
            $q->save( $out_fh );
        }
        close( $out_fh );

        # reopen for reading
        open (my $in_fh,'<','test.out') || die "Can't open test.out: $!";
        while (!eof($in_fh)) {
            my $q = CGI->new($in_fh);
            print $q->param('counter'),"\n";
        }

    The file format used for save/restore is identical to that used by the Whitehead Genome Center's
    data exchange format "Boulderio", and can be manipulated and even databased using Boulderio
    utilities. See Boulder for further details.

    If you wish to use this method from the function-oriented (non-OO) interface, the exported name
    for this method is save_parameters().

  Retrieving cgi errors
    Errors can occur while processing user input, particularly when processing uploaded files. When
    these errors occur, CGI will stop processing and return an empty parameter list. You can test
    for the existence and nature of errors using the *cgi_error()* function. The error messages are
    formatted as HTTP status codes. You can either incorporate the error text into a page, or use it
    as the value of the HTTP status:

        if ( my $error = $q->cgi_error ) {
            print $q->header( -status => $error );
            print "Error: $error";
            exit 0;
        }

    When using the function-oriented interface (see the next section), errors may only occur the
    first time you call *param()*. Be ready for this!

  Using the function-oriented interface
    To use the function-oriented interface, you must specify which CGI.pm routines or sets of
    routines to import into your script's namespace. There is a small overhead associated with this
    importation, but it isn't much.

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI qw/ list of methods /;

    The listed methods will be imported into the current package; you can call them directly without
    creating a CGI object first. This example shows how to import the param() and header() methods,
    and then use them directly:

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI qw/ param header /;
        print header('text/plain');
        my $zipcode = param('zipcode');

    More frequently, you'll import common sets of functions by referring to the groups by name. All
    function sets are preceded with a ":" character as in ":cgi" (for CGI protocol handling
    methods).

    Here is a list of the function sets you can import:

    :cgi
        Import all CGI-handling methods, such as param(), path_info() and the like.

    :all
        Import all the available methods. For the full list, see the CGI.pm code, where the variable
        %EXPORT_TAGS is defined. (N.B. the :cgi-lib imports will not be included in the :all import,
        you will have to import :cgi-lib to get those)

    Note that in the interests of execution speed CGI.pm does not use the standard Exporter syntax
    for specifying load symbols. This may change in the future.

  Pragmas
    In addition to the function sets, there are a number of pragmas that you can import. Pragmas,
    which are always preceded by a hyphen, change the way that CGI.pm functions in various ways.
    Pragmas, function sets, and individual functions can all be imported in the same use() line. For
    example, the following use statement imports the cgi set of functions and enables debugging mode
    (pragma -debug):

        use strict;
        use warninigs;
        use CGI qw/ :cgi -debug /;

    The current list of pragmas is as follows:

    -no_undef_params
        This keeps CGI.pm from including undef params in the parameter list.

    -utf8
        This makes CGI.pm treat all parameters as text strings rather than binary strings (see
        perlunitut for the distinction), assuming UTF-8 for the encoding.

        CGI.pm does the decoding from the UTF-8 encoded input data, restricting this decoding to
        input text as distinct from binary upload data which are left untouched. Therefore, a
        ':utf8' layer must not be used on STDIN.

        If you do not use this option you can manually select which fields are expected to return
        utf-8 strings and convert them using code like this:

            use strict;
            use warnings;

            use CGI;
            use Encode qw/ decode /;

            my $cgi   = CGI->new;
            my $param = $cgi->param('foo');
            $param    = decode( 'UTF-8',$param );

    -putdata_upload / -postdata_upload / -patchdata_upload
        Makes "$cgi->param('PUTDATA');", "$cgi->param('PATCHDATA');", and "$cgi->param('POSTDATA');"
        act like file uploads named PUTDATA, PATCHDATA, and POSTDATA. See "Handling non-urlencoded
        arguments" and "Processing a file upload field" PUTDATA/POSTDATA/PATCHDATA are also
        available via upload_hook.

    -nph
        This makes CGI.pm produce a header appropriate for an NPH (no parsed header) script. You may
        need to do other things as well to tell the server that the script is NPH. See the
        discussion of NPH scripts below.

    -newstyle_urls
        Separate the name=value pairs in CGI parameter query strings with semicolons rather than
        ampersands. For example:

            ?name=fred;age=24;favorite_color=3

        Semicolon-delimited query strings are always accepted, and will be emitted by self_url() and
        query_string(). newstyle_urls became the default in version 2.64.

    -oldstyle_urls
        Separate the name=value pairs in CGI parameter query strings with ampersands rather than
        semicolons. This is no longer the default.

    -no_debug
        This turns off the command-line processing features. If you want to run a CGI.pm script from
        the command line, and you don't want it to read CGI parameters from the command line or
        STDIN, then use this pragma:

           use CGI qw/ -no_debug :standard /;

    -debug
        This turns on full debugging. In addition to reading CGI arguments from the command-line
        processing, CGI.pm will pause and try to read arguments from STDIN, producing the message
        "(offline mode: enter name=value pairs on standard input)" features.

        See the section on debugging for more details.

GENERATING DYNAMIC DOCUMENTS
    Most of CGI.pm's functions deal with creating documents on the fly. Generally you will produce
    the HTTP header first, followed by the document itself. CGI.pm provides functions for generating
    HTTP headers of various types.

    Each of these functions produces a fragment of HTTP which you can print out directly so that it
    is processed by the browser, appended to a string, or saved to a file for later use.

  Creating a standard http header
    Normally the first thing you will do in any CGI script is print out an HTTP header. This tells
    the browser what type of document to expect, and gives other optional information, such as the
    language, expiration date, and whether to cache the document. The header can also be manipulated
    for special purposes, such as server push and pay per view pages.

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI;

        my $cgi = CGI->new;

        print $cgi->header;

            -or-

        print $cgi->header('image/gif');

            -or-

        print $cgi->header('text/html','204 No response');

            -or-

        print $cgi->header(
            -type       => 'image/gif',
            -nph        => 1,
            -status     => '402 Payment required',
            -expires    => '+3d',
            -cookie     => $cookie,
            -charset    => 'utf-8',
            -attachment => 'foo.gif',
            -Cost       => '$2.00'
        );

    header() returns the Content-type: header. You can provide your own MIME type if you choose,
    otherwise it defaults to text/html. An optional second parameter specifies the status code and a
    human-readable message. For example, you can specify 204, "No response" to create a script that
    tells the browser to do nothing at all. Note that RFC 2616 expects the human-readable phase to
    be there as well as the numeric status code.

    The last example shows the named argument style for passing arguments to the CGI methods using
    named parameters. Recognized parameters are -type, -status, -expires, and -cookie. Any other
    named parameters will be stripped of their initial hyphens and turned into header fields,
    allowing you to specify any HTTP header you desire. Internal underscores will be turned into
    hyphens:

        print $cgi->header( -Content_length => 3002 );

    Most browsers will not cache the output from CGI scripts. Every time the browser reloads the
    page, the script is invoked anew. You can change this behavior with the -expires parameter. When
    you specify an absolute or relative expiration interval with this parameter, some browsers and
    proxy servers will cache the script's output until the indicated expiration date. The following
    forms are all valid for the -expires field:

        +30s                                  30 seconds from now
        +10m                                  ten minutes from now
        +1h                                   one hour from now
        -1d                                   yesterday (i.e. "ASAP!")
        now                                   immediately
        +3M                                   in three months
        +10y                                  in ten years time
        Thursday, 25-Apr-2018 00:40:33 GMT    at the indicated time & date

    The -cookie parameter generates a header that tells the browser to provide a "magic cookie"
    during all subsequent transactions with your script. Some cookies have a special format that
    includes interesting attributes such as expiration time. Use the cookie() method to create and
    retrieve session cookies.

    The -nph parameter, if set to a true value, will issue the correct headers to work with a NPH
    (no-parse-header) script. This is important to use with certain servers that expect all their
    scripts to be NPH.

    The -charset parameter can be used to control the character set sent to the browser. If not
    provided, defaults to ISO-8859-1. As a side effect, this sets the charset() method as well. Note
    that the default being ISO-8859-1 may not make sense for all content types, e.g.:

        Content-Type: image/gif; charset=ISO-8859-1

    In the above case you need to pass -charset => '' to prevent the default being used.

    The -attachment parameter can be used to turn the page into an attachment. Instead of displaying
    the page, some browsers will prompt the user to save it to disk. The value of the argument is
    the suggested name for the saved file. In order for this to work, you may have to set the -type
    to "application/octet-stream".

    The -p3p parameter will add a P3P tag to the outgoing header. The parameter can be an arrayref
    or a space-delimited string of P3P tags. For example:

        print $cgi->header( -p3p => [ qw/ CAO DSP LAW CURa / ] );
        print $cgi->header( -p3p => 'CAO DSP LAW CURa' );

    In either case, the outgoing header will be formatted as:

        P3P: policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" cp="CAO DSP LAW CURa"

    CGI.pm will accept valid multi-line headers when each line is separated with a CRLF value
    ("\r\n" on most platforms) followed by at least one space. For example:

        print $cgi->header( -ingredients => "ham\r\n\seggs\r\n\sbacon" );

    Invalid multi-line header input will trigger in an exception. When multi-line headers are
    received, CGI.pm will always output them back as a single line, according to the folding rules
    of RFC 2616: the newlines will be removed, while the white space remains.

  Generating a redirection header
        print $q->redirect( 'http://somewhere.else/in/movie/land' );

    Sometimes you don't want to produce a document yourself, but simply redirect the browser
    elsewhere, perhaps choosing a URL based on the time of day or the identity of the user.

    The redirect() method redirects the browser to a different URL. If you use redirection like
    this, you should not print out a header as well.

    You are advised to use full URLs (absolute with respect to current URL or even including the
    http: or ftp: part) in redirection requests as relative URLs are resolved by the user agent of
    the client so may not do what you want or expect them to do.

    You can also use named arguments:

        print $q->redirect(
            -uri    => 'http://somewhere.else/in/movie/land',
            -nph    => 1,
            -status => '301 Moved Permanently'
        );

    All names arguments recognized by header() are also recognized by redirect(). However, most HTTP
    headers, including those generated by -cookie and -target, are ignored by the browser.

    The -nph parameter, if set to a true value, will issue the correct headers to work with a NPH
    (no-parse-header) script. This is important to use with certain servers, such as Microsoft IIS,
    which expect all their scripts to be NPH.

    The -status parameter will set the status of the redirect. HTTP defines several different
    possible redirection status codes, and the default if not specified is 302, which means "moved
    temporarily." You may change the status to another status code if you wish.

    Note that the human-readable phrase is also expected to be present to conform with RFC 2616,
    section 6.1.

  Creating a self-referencing url that preserves state information
        my $myself = $q->self_url;
        print qq(<a href="$myself">I'm talking to myself.</a>);

    self_url() will return a URL, that, when selected, will re-invoke this script with all its state
    information intact. This is most useful when you want to jump around within the document using
    internal anchors but you don't want to disrupt the current contents of the form(s). Something
    like this will do the trick:

         my $myself = $q->self_url;
         print "<a href=\"$myself#table1\">See table 1</a>";
         print "<a href=\"$myself#table2\">See table 2</a>";
         print "<a href=\"$myself#yourself\">See for yourself</a>";

    If you want more control over what's returned, using the url() method instead.

    You can also retrieve a query string representation of the current object state with
    query_string():

        my $the_string = $q->query_string();

    The behavior of calling query_string is currently undefined when the HTTP method is something
    other than GET.

    If you want to retrieved the query string as set in the webserver, namely the environment
    variable, you can call env_query_string()

  Obtaining the script's url
        my $full_url      = url();
        my $full_url      = url( -full =>1 );  # alternative syntax
        my $relative_url  = url( -relative => 1 );
        my $absolute_url  = url( -absolute =>1 );
        my $url_with_path = url( -path_info => 1 );
        my $url_path_qry  = url( -path_info => 1, -query =>1 );
        my $netloc        = url( -base => 1 );

    url() returns the script's URL in a variety of formats. Called without any arguments, it returns
    the full form of the URL, including host name and port number

        http://your.host.com/path/to/script.cgi

    You can modify this format with the following named arguments:

    -absolute
        If true, produce an absolute URL, e.g.

            /path/to/script.cgi

    -relative
        Produce a relative URL. This is useful if you want to re-invoke your script with different
        parameters. For example:

            script.cgi

    -full
        Produce the full URL, exactly as if called without any arguments. This overrides the
        -relative and -absolute arguments.

    -path (-path_info)
        Append the additional path information to the URL. This can be combined with -full,
        -absolute or -relative. -path_info is provided as a synonym.

    -query (-query_string)
        Append the query string to the URL. This can be combined with -full, -absolute or -relative.
        -query_string is provided as a synonym.

    -base
        Generate just the protocol and net location, as in http://www.foo.com:8000

    -rewrite
        If Apache's mod_rewrite is turned on, then the script name and path info probably won't
        match the request that the user sent. Set -rewrite => 1 (default) to return URLs that match
        what the user sent (the original request URI). Set -rewrite => 0 to return URLs that match
        the URL after the mod_rewrite rules have run.

  Mixing post and url parameters
        my $color = url_param('color');

    It is possible for a script to receive CGI parameters in the URL as well as in the fill-out form
    by creating a form that POSTs to a URL containing a query string (a "?" mark followed by
    arguments). The param() method will always return the contents of the POSTed fill-out form,
    ignoring the URL's query string. To retrieve URL parameters, call the url_param() method. Use it
    in the same way as param(). The main difference is that it allows you to read the parameters,
    but not set them.

    Under no circumstances will the contents of the URL query string interfere with similarly-named
    CGI parameters in POSTed forms. If you try to mix a URL query string with a form submitted with
    the GET method, the results will not be what you expect.

    If running from the command line, "url_param" will not pick up any parameters given on the
    command line.

  Processing a file upload field
   Basics
    When the form is processed, you can retrieve an IO::File compatible handle for a file upload
    field like this:

        use autodie;

        # undef may be returned if it's not a valid file handle
        if ( my $io_handle = $q->upload('field_name') ) {
            open ( my $out_file,'>>','/usr/local/web/users/feedback' );
            while ( my $bytesread = $io_handle->read($buffer,1024) ) {
                print $out_file $buffer;
            }
        }

    In a list context, upload() will return an array of filehandles. This makes it possible to
    process forms that use the same name for multiple upload fields.

    If you want the entered file name for the file, you can just call param():

        my $filename = $q->param('field_name');

    Different browsers will return slightly different things for the name. Some browsers return the
    filename only. Others return the full path to the file, using the path conventions of the user's
    machine. Regardless, the name returned is always the name of the file on the *user's* machine,
    and is unrelated to the name of the temporary file that CGI.pm creates during upload spooling
    (see below).

    When a file is uploaded the browser usually sends along some information along with it in the
    format of headers. The information usually includes the MIME content type. To retrieve this
    information, call uploadInfo(). It returns a reference to a hash containing all the document
    headers.

        my $filehandle = $q->upload( 'uploaded_file' );
        my $type       = $q->uploadInfo( $filehandle )->{'Content-Type'};
        if ( $type ne 'text/html' ) {
            die "HTML FILES ONLY!";
        }

    Note that you must use ->upload or ->param to get the file-handle to pass into uploadInfo as
    internally this is represented as a File::Temp object (which is what will be returned by
    ->upload or ->param). When using ->Vars you will get the literal filename rather than the
    File::Temp object, which will not return anything when passed to uploadInfo. So don't use
    ->Vars.

    If you are using a machine that recognizes "text" and "binary" data modes, be sure to understand
    when and how to use them (see the Camel book). Otherwise you may find that binary files are
    corrupted during file uploads.

   Accessing the temp files directly
    When processing an uploaded file, CGI.pm creates a temporary file on your hard disk and passes
    you a file handle to that file. After you are finished with the file handle, CGI.pm unlinks
    (deletes) the temporary file. If you need to you can access the temporary file directly. You can
    access the temp file for a file upload by passing the file name to the tmpFileName() method:

        my $filehandle  = $q->upload( 'uploaded_file' );
        my $tmpfilename = $q->tmpFileName( $filehandle );

    As with ->uploadInfo, using the reference returned by ->upload or ->param is preferred, although
    unlike ->uploadInfo, plain filenames also work if possible for backwards compatibility.

    The temporary file will be deleted automatically when your program exits unless you manually
    rename it or set $CGI::UNLINK_TMP_FILES to 0. On some operating systems (such as Windows NT),
    you will need to close the temporary file's filehandle before your program exits. Otherwise the
    attempt to delete the temporary file will fail.

   Changes in temporary file handling (v4.05+)
    CGI.pm had its temporary file handling significantly refactored, this logic is now all deferred
    to File::Temp (which is wrapped in a compatibility object, CGI::File::Temp - DO NOT USE THIS
    PACKAGE DIRECTLY). As a consequence the PRIVATE_TEMPFILES variable has been removed along with
    deprecation of the private_tempfiles routine and complete removal of the CGITempFile package.
    The $CGITempFile::TMPDIRECTORY is no longer used to set the temp directory, refer to the perldoc
    for File::Temp if you want to override the default settings in that package (the TMPDIR env
    variable is still available on some platforms). For Windows platforms the temporary directory
    order remains as before: TEMP > TMP > WINDIR ( > TMPDIR ) so if you have any of these in use in
    existing scripts they should still work.

    The Fh package still exists but does nothing, the CGI::File::Temp class is a subclass of both
    File::Temp and the empty Fh package, so if you have any code that checks that the filehandle isa
    Fh this should still work.

    When you get the internal file handle you will receive a File::Temp object, this should be
    transparent as File::Temp isa IO::Handle and isa IO::Seekable meaning it behaves as previously.
    If you are doing anything out of the ordinary with regards to temp files you should test your
    code before deploying this update and refer to the File::Temp documentation for more
    information.

   Handling interrupted file uploads
    There are occasionally problems involving parsing the uploaded file. This usually happens when
    the user presses "Stop" before the upload is finished. In this case, CGI.pm will return undef
    for the name of the uploaded file and set *cgi_error()* to the string "400 Bad request
    (malformed multipart POST)". This error message is designed so that you can incorporate it into
    a status code to be sent to the browser. Example:

        my $file = $q->upload( 'uploaded_file' );
        if ( !$file && $q->cgi_error ) {
            print $q->header( -status => $q->cgi_error );
            exit 0;
        }

   Progress bars for file uploads and avoiding temp files
    CGI.pm gives you low-level access to file upload management through a file upload hook. You can
    use this feature to completely turn off the temp file storage of file uploads, or potentially
    write your own file upload progress meter.

    This is much like the UPLOAD_HOOK facility available in Apache::Request, with the exception that
    the first argument to the callback is an Apache::Upload object, here it's the remote filename.

        my $q = CGI->new( \&hook [,$data [,$use_tempfile]] );

        sub hook {
            my ( $filename, $buffer, $bytes_read, $data ) = @_;
            print "Read $bytes_read bytes of $filename\n";
        }

    The $data field is optional; it lets you pass configuration information (e.g. a database handle)
    to your hook callback.

    The $use_tempfile field is a flag that lets you turn on and off CGI.pm's use of a temporary
    disk-based file during file upload. If you set this to a FALSE value (default true) then
    $q->param('uploaded_file') will no longer work, and the only way to get at the uploaded data is
    via the hook you provide.

    If using the function-oriented interface, call the CGI::upload_hook() method before calling
    param() or any other CGI functions:

        CGI::upload_hook( \&hook [,$data [,$use_tempfile]] );

    This method is not exported by default. You will have to import it explicitly if you wish to use
    it without the CGI:: prefix.

   Troubleshooting file uploads on Windows
    If you are using CGI.pm on a Windows platform and find that binary files get slightly larger
    when uploaded but that text files remain the same, then you have forgotten to activate binary
    mode on the output filehandle. Be sure to call binmode() on any handle that you create to write
    the uploaded file to disk.

   Older ways to process file uploads
    This section is here for completeness. if you are building a new application with CGI.pm, you
    can skip it.

    The original way to process file uploads with CGI.pm was to use param(). The value it returns
    has a dual nature as both a file name and a lightweight filehandle. This dual nature is
    problematic if you following the recommended practice of having "use strict" in your code. perl
    will complain when you try to use a string as a filehandle. More seriously, it is possible for
    the remote user to type garbage into the upload field, in which case what you get from param()
    is not a filehandle at all, but a string.

    To solve this problem the upload() method was added, which always returns a lightweight
    filehandle. This generally works well, but will have trouble interoperating with some other
    modules because the file handle is not derived from IO::File. So that brings us to current
    recommendation given above, which is to call the handle() method on the file handle returned by
    upload(). That upgrades the handle to an IO::File. It's a big win for compatibility for a small
    penalty of loading IO::File the first time you call it.

HTTP COOKIES
    CGI.pm has several methods that support cookies.

    A cookie is a name=value pair much like the named parameters in a CGI query string. CGI scripts
    create one or more cookies and send them to the browser in the HTTP header. The browser
    maintains a list of cookies that belong to a particular Web server, and returns them to the CGI
    script during subsequent interactions.

    In addition to the required name=value pair, each cookie has several optional attributes:

    1. an expiration time
        This is a time/date string (in a special GMT format) that indicates when a cookie expires.
        The cookie will be saved and returned to your script until this expiration date is reached
        if the user exits the browser and restarts it. If an expiration date isn't specified, the
        cookie will remain active until the user quits the browser.

    2. a domain
        This is a partial or complete domain name for which the cookie is valid. The browser will
        return the cookie to any host that matches the partial domain name. For example, if you
        specify a domain name of ".capricorn.com", then the browser will return the cookie to Web
        servers running on any of the machines "www.capricorn.com", "www2.capricorn.com",
        "feckless.capricorn.com", etc. Domain names must contain at least two periods to prevent
        attempts to match on top level domains like ".edu". If no domain is specified, then the
        browser will only return the cookie to servers on the host the cookie originated from.

    3. a path
        If you provide a cookie path attribute, the browser will check it against your script's URL
        before returning the cookie. For example, if you specify the path "/cgi-bin", then the
        cookie will be returned to each of the scripts "/cgi-bin/tally.pl", "/cgi-bin/order.pl", and
        "/cgi-bin/customer_service/complain.pl", but not to the script "/cgi-private/site_admin.pl".
        By default, path is set to "/", which causes the cookie to be sent to any CGI script on your
        site.

    4. a "secure" flag
        If the "secure" attribute is set, the cookie will only be sent to your script if the CGI
        request is occurring on a secure channel, such as SSL.

    The interface to HTTP cookies is the cookie() method:

        my $cookie = $q->cookie(
            -name    => 'sessionID',
            -value   => 'xyzzy',
            -expires => '+1h',
            -path    => '/cgi-bin/database',
            -domain  => '.capricorn.org',
            -secure  => 1
        );

        print $q->header( -cookie => $cookie );

    cookie() creates a new cookie. Its parameters include:

    -name
        The name of the cookie (required). This can be any string at all. Although browsers limit
        their cookie names to non-whitespace alphanumeric characters, CGI.pm removes this
        restriction by escaping and unescaping cookies behind the scenes.

    -value
        The value of the cookie. This can be any scalar value, array reference, or even hash
        reference. For example, you can store an entire hash into a cookie this way:

            my $cookie = $q->cookie(
                -name  => 'family information',
                -value => \%childrens_ages
            );

    -path
        The optional partial path for which this cookie will be valid, as described above.

    -domain
        The optional partial domain for which this cookie will be valid, as described above.

    -expires
        The optional expiration date for this cookie. The format is as described in the section on
        the header() method:

            "+1h"  one hour from now

    -secure
        If set to true, this cookie will only be used within a secure SSL session.

    The cookie created by cookie() must be incorporated into the HTTP header within the string
    returned by the header() method:

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI;

        my $q      = CGI->new;
        my $cookie = ...
        print $q->header( -cookie => $cookie );

    To create multiple cookies, give header() an array reference:

        my $cookie1 = $q->cookie(
            -name  => 'riddle_name',
            -value => "The Sphynx's Question"
        );

        my $cookie2 = $q->cookie(
            -name  => 'answers',
            -value => \%answers
        );

        print $q->header( -cookie => [ $cookie1,$cookie2 ] );

    To retrieve a cookie, request it by name by calling cookie() method without the -value
    parameter. This example uses the object-oriented form:

        my $riddle  = $q->cookie('riddle_name');
        my %answers = $q->cookie('answers');

    Cookies created with a single scalar value, such as the "riddle_name" cookie, will be returned
    in that form. Cookies with array and hash values can also be retrieved.

    The cookie and CGI namespaces are separate. If you have a parameter named 'answers' and a cookie
    named 'answers', the values retrieved by param() and cookie() are independent of each other.
    However, it's simple to turn a CGI parameter into a cookie, and vice-versa:

        # turn a CGI parameter into a cookie
        my $c = cookie( -name => 'answers',-value => [$q->param('answers')] );
        # vice-versa
        $q->param( -name => 'answers',-value => [ $q->cookie('answers')] );

    If you call cookie() without any parameters, it will return a list of the names of all cookies
    passed to your script:

        my @cookies = $q->cookie();

    See the cookie.cgi example script for some ideas on how to use cookies effectively.

    $CGI::COOKIE_CACHE
        If set to a non-negative integer, this variable will cause CGI.pm to use the cached cookie
        details from the previous call to cookie(). By default this cache is off to retain backwards
        compatibility.

DEBUGGING
    If you are running the script from the command line or in the perl debugger, you can pass the
    script a list of keywords or parameter=value pairs on the command line or from standard input
    (you don't have to worry about tricking your script into reading from environment variables).
    You can pass keywords like this:

        your_script.pl keyword1 keyword2 keyword3

    or this:

       your_script.pl keyword1+keyword2+keyword3

    or this:

        your_script.pl name1=value1 name2=value2

    or this:

        your_script.pl name1=value1&name2=value2

    To turn off this feature, use the -no_debug pragma.

    To test the POST method, you may enable full debugging with the -debug pragma. This will allow
    you to feed newline-delimited name=value pairs to the script on standard input.

    When debugging, you can use quotes and backslashes to escape characters in the familiar shell
    manner, letting you place spaces and other funny characters in your parameter=value pairs:

        your_script.pl "name1='I am a long value'" "name2=two\ words"

    Finally, you can set the path info for the script by prefixing the first name/value parameter
    with the path followed by a question mark (?):

        your_script.pl /your/path/here?name1=value1&name2=value2

FETCHING ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
    Some of the more useful environment variables can be fetched through this interface. The methods
    are as follows:

    Accept()
        Return a list of MIME types that the remote browser accepts. If you give this method a
        single argument corresponding to a MIME type, as in Accept('text/html'), it will return a
        floating point value corresponding to the browser's preference for this type from 0.0 (don't
        want) to 1.0. Glob types (e.g. text/*) in the browser's accept list are handled correctly.

        Note that the capitalization changed between version 2.43 and 2.44 in order to avoid
        conflict with perl's accept() function.

    raw_cookie()
        Returns the HTTP_COOKIE variable. Cookies have a special format, and this method call just
        returns the raw form (?cookie dough). See cookie() for ways of setting and retrieving cooked
        cookies.

        Called with no parameters, raw_cookie() returns the packed cookie structure. You can
        separate it into individual cookies by splitting on the character sequence "; ". Called with
        the name of a cookie, retrieves the unescaped form of the cookie. You can use the regular
        cookie() method to get the names, or use the raw_fetch() method from the CGI::Cookie module.

    env_query_string()
        Returns the QUERY_STRING variable, note that this is the original value as set in the
        environment by the webserver and (possibly) not the same value as returned by
        query_string(), which represents the object state

    user_agent()
        Returns the HTTP_USER_AGENT variable. If you give this method a single argument, it will
        attempt to pattern match on it, allowing you to do something like user_agent(Mozilla);

    path_info()
        Returns additional path information from the script URL. E.G. fetching
        /cgi-bin/your_script/additional/stuff will result in path_info() returning
        "/additional/stuff".

        NOTE: The Microsoft Internet Information Server is broken with respect to additional path
        information. If you use the perl DLL library, the IIS server will attempt to execute the
        additional path information as a perl script. If you use the ordinary file associations
        mapping, the path information will be present in the environment, but incorrect. The best
        thing to do is to avoid using additional path information in CGI scripts destined for use
        with IIS. A best attempt has been made to make CGI.pm do the right thing.

    path_translated()
        As per path_info() but returns the additional path information translated into a physical
        path, e.g. "/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/additional/stuff".

        The Microsoft IIS is broken with respect to the translated path as well.

    remote_host()
        Returns either the remote host name or IP address if the former is unavailable.

    remote_ident()
        Returns the name of the remote user (as returned by identd) or undef if not set

    remote_addr()
        Returns the remote host IP address, or 127.0.0.1 if the address is unavailable.

    request_uri()
        Returns the interpreted pathname of the requested document or CGI (relative to the document
        root). Or undef if not set.

    script_name()
        Return the script name as a partial URL, for self-referring scripts.

    referer()
        Return the URL of the page the browser was viewing prior to fetching your script.

    auth_type()
        Return the authorization/verification method in use for this script, if any.

    server_name()
        Returns the name of the server, usually the machine's host name.

    virtual_host()
        When using virtual hosts, returns the name of the host that the browser attempted to contact

    server_port()
        Return the port that the server is listening on.

    server_protocol()
        Returns the protocol and revision of the incoming request, or defaults to HTTP/1.0 if this
        is not set

    virtual_port()
        Like server_port() except that it takes virtual hosts into account. Use this when running
        with virtual hosts.

    server_software()
        Returns the server software and version number.

    remote_user()
        Return the authorization/verification name used for user verification, if this script is
        protected.

    user_name()
        Attempt to obtain the remote user's name, using a variety of different techniques. May not
        work in all browsers.

    request_method()
        Returns the method used to access your script, usually one of 'POST', 'GET' or 'HEAD'. If
        running from the command line it will be undef.

    content_type()
        Returns the content_type of data submitted in a POST, generally multipart/form-data or
        application/x-www-form-urlencoded

    http()
        Called with no arguments returns the list of HTTP environment variables, including such
        things as HTTP_USER_AGENT, HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE, and HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET, corresponding to
        the like-named HTTP header fields in the request. Called with the name of an HTTP header
        field, returns its value. Capitalization and the use of hyphens versus underscores are not
        significant.

        For example, all three of these examples are equivalent:

            my $requested_language = $q->http('Accept-language');

            my $requested_language = $q->http('Accept_language');

            my $requested_language = $q->http('HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE');

    https()
        The same as *http()*, but operates on the HTTPS environment variables present when the SSL
        protocol is in effect. Can be used to determine whether SSL is turned on.

USING NPH SCRIPTS
    NPH, or "no-parsed-header", scripts bypass the server completely by sending the complete HTTP
    header directly to the browser. This has slight performance benefits, but is of most use for
    taking advantage of HTTP extensions that are not directly supported by your server, such as
    server push and PICS headers.

    Servers use a variety of conventions for designating CGI scripts as NPH. Many Unix servers look
    at the beginning of the script's name for the prefix "nph-". The Macintosh WebSTAR server and
    Microsoft's Internet Information Server, in contrast, try to decide whether a program is an NPH
    script by examining the first line of script output.

    CGI.pm supports NPH scripts with a special NPH mode. When in this mode, CGI.pm will output the
    necessary extra header information when the header() and redirect() methods are called.

    The Microsoft Internet Information Server requires NPH mode. As of version 2.30, CGI.pm will
    automatically detect when the script is running under IIS and put itself into this mode. You do
    not need to do this manually, although it won't hurt anything if you do.

    In the use statement
        Simply add the "-nph" pragma to the list of symbols to be imported into your script:

            use CGI qw(:standard -nph)

    By calling the nph() method:
        Call nph() with a non-zero parameter at any point after using CGI.pm in your program.

            CGI->nph(1)

    By using -nph parameters
        in the header() and redirect() statements:

            print header(-nph=>1);

SERVER PUSH
    CGI.pm provides four simple functions for producing multipart documents of the type needed to
    implement server push. These functions were graciously provided by Ed Jordan <ed AT fidalgo.net>.
    To import these into your namespace, you must import the ":push" set. You are also advised to
    put the script into NPH mode and to set $| to 1 to avoid buffering problems.

    Here is a simple script that demonstrates server push:

        #!/usr/bin/env perl

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI qw/:push -nph/;

        $| = 1;
        print multipart_init( -boundary=>'----here we go!' );
        for (0 .. 4) {
            print multipart_start( -type=>'text/plain' ),
                "The current time is ",scalar( localtime ),"\n";
            if ($_ < 4) {
                print multipart_end();
            } else {
                print multipart_final();
            }
            sleep 1;
        }

    This script initializes server push by calling multipart_init(). It then enters a loop in which
    it begins a new multipart section by calling multipart_start(), prints the current local time,
    and ends a multipart section with multipart_end(). It then sleeps a second, and begins again. On
    the final iteration, it ends the multipart section with multipart_final() rather than with
    multipart_end().

    multipart_init()
            multipart_init( -boundary => $boundary, -charset => $charset );

        Initialize the multipart system. The -boundary argument specifies what MIME boundary string
        to use to separate parts of the document. If not provided, CGI.pm chooses a reasonable
        boundary for you.

        The -charset provides the character set, if not provided this will default to ISO-8859-1

    multipart_start()
            multipart_start( -type => $type, -charset => $charset );

        Start a new part of the multipart document using the specified MIME type and charset. If not
        specified, text/html ISO-8859-1 is assumed.

    multipart_end()
            multipart_end()

        End a part. You must remember to call multipart_end() once for each multipart_start(),
        except at the end of the last part of the multipart document when multipart_final() should
        be called instead of multipart_end().

    multipart_final()
            multipart_final()

        End all parts. You should call multipart_final() rather than multipart_end() at the end of
        the last part of the multipart document.

    Users interested in server push applications should also have a look at the CGI::Push module.

AVOIDING DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACKS
    A potential problem with CGI.pm is that, by default, it attempts to process form POSTings no
    matter how large they are. A wily hacker could attack your site by sending a CGI script a huge
    POST of many gigabytes. CGI.pm will attempt to read the entire POST into a variable, growing
    hugely in size until it runs out of memory. While the script attempts to allocate the memory the
    system may slow down dramatically. This is a form of denial of service attack.

    Another possible attack is for the remote user to force CGI.pm to accept a huge file upload.
    CGI.pm will accept the upload and store it in a temporary directory even if your script doesn't
    expect to receive an uploaded file. CGI.pm will delete the file automatically when it
    terminates, but in the meantime the remote user may have filled up the server's disk space,
    causing problems for other programs.

    The best way to avoid denial of service attacks is to limit the amount of memory, CPU time and
    disk space that CGI scripts can use. Some Web servers come with built-in facilities to
    accomplish this. In other cases, you can use the shell *limit* or *ulimit* commands to put
    ceilings on CGI resource usage.

    CGI.pm also has some simple built-in protections against denial of service attacks, but you must
    activate them before you can use them. These take the form of two global variables in the CGI
    name space:

    $CGI::POST_MAX
        If set to a non-negative integer, this variable puts a ceiling on the size of POSTings, in
        bytes. If CGI.pm detects a POST that is greater than the ceiling, it will immediately exit
        with an error message. This value will affect both ordinary POSTs and multipart POSTs,
        meaning that it limits the maximum size of file uploads as well. You should set this to a
        reasonably high value, such as 10 megabytes.

    $CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS
        If set to a non-zero value, this will disable file uploads completely. Other fill-out form
        values will work as usual.

    To use these variables, set the variable at the top of the script, right after the "use"
    statement:

        #!/usr/bin/env perl

        use strict;
        use warnings;

        use CGI;

        $CGI::POST_MAX = 1024 * 1024 * 10;  # max 10MB posts
        $CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS = 1;          # no uploads

    An attempt to send a POST larger than $POST_MAX bytes will cause *param()* to return an empty
    CGI parameter list. You can test for this event by checking *cgi_error()*, either after you
    create the CGI object or, if you are using the function-oriented interface, call <param()> for
    the first time. If the POST was intercepted, then cgi_error() will return the message "413 POST
    too large".

    This error message is actually defined by the HTTP protocol, and is designed to be returned to
    the browser as the CGI script's status code. For example:

        my $uploaded_file = $q->param('upload');
        if ( !$uploaded_file && $q->cgi_error() ) {
            print $q->header( -status => $q->cgi_error() );
            exit 0;
       }

    However it isn't clear that any browser currently knows what to do with this status code. It
    might be better just to create a page that warns the user of the problem.

MODULE FLAGS
    There are a number of global module flags which affect how CGI.pm operates.

    $CGI::APPEND_QUERY_STRING
        If set to a non-zero value, this will add query string parameters to a POST forms parameters
        hence allowing *param()* to return values from the query string as well as from the decoded
        POST request instead of having to use *url_param* instead. This makes it easier to get the
        value of a parameter when you don't know the source.

COMPATIBILITY WITH CGI-LIB.PL
    To make it easier to port existing programs that use cgi-lib.pl the compatibility routine
    "ReadParse" is provided. Porting is simple:

    OLD VERSION

        require "cgi-lib.pl";
        &ReadParse;
        print "The value of the antique is $in{antique}.\n";

    NEW VERSION

        use CGI;
        CGI::ReadParse();
        print "The value of the antique is $in{antique}.\n";

    CGI.pm's ReadParse() routine creates a tied variable named %in, which can be accessed to obtain
    the query variables. Like ReadParse, you can also provide your own variable. Infrequently used
    features of ReadParse, such as the creation of @in and $in variables, are not supported.

    Once you use ReadParse, you can retrieve the query object itself this way:

        my $q = $in{CGI};

    This allows you to start using the more interesting features of CGI.pm without rewriting your
    old scripts from scratch.

    An even simpler way to mix cgi-lib calls with CGI.pm calls is to import both the ":cgi-lib" and
    ":standard" method:

        use CGI qw(:cgi-lib :standard);
        &ReadParse;
        print "The price of your purchase is $in{price}.\n";
        print textfield(-name=>'price', -default=>'$1.99');

  Cgi-lib functions that are available in CGI.pm
    In compatibility mode, the following cgi-lib.pl functions are available for your use:

        ReadParse()
        PrintHeader()
        SplitParam()
        MethGet()
        MethPost()

LICENSE
    The CGI.pm distribution is copyright 1995-2007, Lincoln D. Stein. It is distributed under the
    Artistic License 2.0. It is currently maintained by Lee Johnson (LEEJO) with help from many
    contributors.

CREDITS
    Thanks very much to:

    Mark Stosberg (mark AT stosberg.com)
    Matt Heffron (heffron AT falstaff.com)
    James Taylor (james.taylor AT srs.gov)
    Scott Anguish (sanguish AT digifix.com)
    Mike Jewell (mlj3u AT virginia.edu)
    Timothy Shimmin (tes AT kbs.au)
    Joergen Haegg (jh AT axis.se)
    Laurent Delfosse (delfosse AT delfosse.com)
    Richard Resnick (applepi1 AT aol.com)
    Craig Bishop (csb AT barwonwater.au)
    Tony Curtis (tc AT vcpc.at)
    Tim Bunce (Tim.Bunce AT ig.uk)
    Tom Christiansen (tchrist AT convex.com)
    Andreas Koenig (k AT franz.DE)
    Tim MacKenzie (Tim.MacKenzie AT fulcrum.au)
    Kevin B. Hendricks (kbhend AT dogwood.edu)
    Stephen Dahmen (joyfire AT inxpress.net)
    Ed Jordan (ed AT fidalgo.net)
    David Alan Pisoni (david AT cnation.com)
    Doug MacEachern (dougm AT opengroup.org)
    Robin Houston (robin AT oneworld.org)
    ...and many many more...
        for suggestions and bug fixes.

BUGS
    Address bug reports and comments to: <https://github.com/leejo/CGI.pm/issues>

    See the <https://github.com/leejo/CGI.pm/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md> file for information on
    raising issues and contributing

    The original bug tracker can be found at:
    <https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Queue=CGI.pm>

SEE ALSO
    CGI::Carp - provides Carp implementation tailored to the CGI environment.

    CGI::Fast - supports running CGI applications under FastCGI