To what does a cgi writtenn in c++ direct output, a widow or the console?

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

I am in the process of building my first website and have decided to write my own cgi for form handling and browser response. I know that in windows programming output is directed to a window and in console programming output is directed to the console. To what does one direct output meant for the browser when writing a cgi?

Posted 2-Nov-11 5:52am

Gbenbam

Add a Solution

2 solutions

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Nish Nishant · Answer 1 · 2011-11-02T05:54:00

Solution 1

Just print to the console, and remember to set the right Content-Type.

Posted 2-Nov-11 5:54am

Nish Nishant

v2

Comments

Gbenbam 2-Nov-11 11:58am

You mean the MIME ?

Nish Nishant 2-Nov-11 12:04pm

No, the HTTP headers.

Chuck O'Toole · Answer 2 · 2011-11-02T09:30:00

To save you some future debugging / headaches.

1) you have to have proper http headers *before* the data is output and they contain the number of characters in the output. Therefore, you need to "buffer up" all your output inside the application before finally dumping it to 'stdout'

2) C/C++ Newline ('\n') will only count as 1 character in a buffer but will become two characters when you print it on 'stdout' so count the number of newlines separately and add that to the length of the buffered output.

Below is the bottom of my CGI app. I buffer the output into total_printout and count newlines in total_newlines. How you do your output buffering and the like is up to you.

C

printf("Content-type: text/html\n");        // make receiving browser happy
if (total_printout != NULL)
{
    printf("Content-length: %d\n\n", strlen(total_printout)+total_newlines);
    printf("%s", total_printout);           // now send it
    free(total_printout);                   // return accumulated output
}
else
{
    printf("Content-length: 0\n\n");        // no output
}