CS1116/CS5018 Lab 1

Part 1

Together we will review some of the details mentioned in the lecture:

If they are to run on the cs1 web server, your must store your server-side programs in public_html/cgi-bin
They must have Unix-style new line characters; you can convert your program using flip -u my_program.py
They must have the right permisssions:
- chmod 604 for HTML, CSS, images, video, audio
- chmod 700 for server-side programs
- chmod 701 for cgi-bin and for directories/folders inside of cgi-bin

Recall all the things that a server-side program needs to include:

shebang in the very first column of the very first line
import of cgitb so that run-time error messages get sent to your browser
any other imports that you may need, e.g. FieldStorage
print the content type
print a blank line
at the end, print a web page

#!/usr/local/bin/python3

from cgitb import enable
enable()

# Other imports can go here

print("Content-type: text/html")
print()

# The heart of the program goes here, e.g. get the user data, do something with it

print("""
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html lang="en">
        <head>
            <meta charset="utf-8" />
            <title>Your title goes here</title>
        </head>
        <body>
        </body>
    </html>""")

Recall how we go about debugging a Python server-side program:
1. Type into pyCharm or idle or your editor
2. Fix any compile-time errors
3. Run it from pyCharm or idle or the command line. Assuming no compile-time errors, you will see either no error message or Traceback error messages
4. At this point, run it in browser (remember to type the URL of the form, don't just double-click on the file, e.g. for student js21: http://cs1.ucc.ie/~js21/cgi-bin/greetings.html)
5. If run-time errors are displayed in browser or there is a logic error, fix them
6. Go back to step 2

Part 2

In your public_html/cgi-bin directory, create a new directory called lab1 (no spaces, all in lowercase!!!!!!). Change the directory permissions to 701.

Take a copy of the following two files (right-click on each link and choose 'Save link as…') and save them in your public_html/cgi-bin/lab1 directory:

Don't forget to fix their permissions!

spies.html contains a form that allows a user to enter his/her firstname and surname. Do not modify spies.html in any way.

spies.py contains a server-side Python program. The program receives the user's firstname and surname from the form. The program outputs a Web page that greets the user in 007-fashion. For example, if the user enters 'James' and 'Bond', the Web page will contain the following paragraph:

                Your spy name is: Bond, James Bond.

If the user enters 'Kevin' and 'Kavanagh', the Web page will contain instead the following paragraph:

                Your spy name is: Kavanagh, Kevin Kavanagh.

However, spy.py is full of bugs. Fix it.

Part 3

Take a copy of the following file (right-click on the link and choose 'Save link as…') and save it in your public_html/cgi-bin/lab1 directory:

lengths.html

lengths.html contains a form that allows a user to enter a length (a number) and to choose units from a menu. Do not modify lengths.html in any way.

Write a server-side Python program in a file called lengths.py in your public_html/cgi-bin/lab1 directory. The program receives the user's data from the form, and converts the number to the other units. It outputs all three values in a Web page that contains an HTML table.

For example, if the user enters '13' and chooses 'Feet', then the table will look like this:

Inches:	156.00
Feet:	13.00
Yards:	4.33

For example, if the user enters '22.5' and chooses 'Yards', then the table will look like this:

Inches:	810.00
Feet:	67.50
Yards:	22.50

Submission

There is no formal submission of this week's exercises. However, for my records, this weekend I will run a program that checks to see whether you have done the work or not.