I have got Apache2 Installed and Python working.
I am having a problem though. I have two pages.
One a Python Page and the other an Html Page with JQuery
Can someone please tell me how I can get my ajax post to work correctly.
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<script>
$(function()
{
alert('Im going to start processing');
$.ajax({
url: "saveList.py",
type: "post",
data: {'param':{"hello":"world"}},
dataType: "application/json",
success : function(response)
{
alert(response);
}
});
});
</script>
</body>
</html>
And the Python Code
import sys
import json
def index(req):
result = {'success':'true','message':'The Command Completed Successfully'};
data = sys.stdin.read();
myjson = json.loads(data);
return str(myjson);
You should read json data like this:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import sys
import json
content_len = int(os.environ["CONTENT_LENGTH"])
req_body = sys.stdin.read(content_len)
my_dict = json.loads(req_body)
With the following code, you can run into problems:
myjson = json.load(sys.stdin)
or written less succinctly:
requ_body = sys.stdin.read()
my_dict = json.load(requ_body)
That does work for me when my cgi script is on an apache
server, but you can't count on that working in general--as I found out when my cgi script was on another server. According to the cgi spec:
RFC 3875 CGI Version 1.1 October 2004
4.2. Request Message-Body
Request data is accessed by the script in a system-defined method;
unless defined otherwise, this will be by reading the 'standard
input' file descriptor or file handle.
Request-Data = [ request-body ] [ extension-data ]
request-body = <CONTENT_LENGTH>OCTET
extension-data = *OCTET
A request-body is supplied with the request if the CONTENT_LENGTH is
not NULL. The server MUST make at least that many bytes available
for the script to read. The server MAY signal an end-of-file
condition after CONTENT_LENGTH bytes have been read or it MAY supply
extension data. Therefore, the script MUST NOT attempt to read more
than CONTENT_LENGTH bytes, even if more data is available. However,
it is not obliged to read any of the data.
The key line is:
the script MUST NOT attempt to read more than CONTENT_LENGTH bytes, even if more data is available.
Apparently, apache
sends an eof signal to the cgi script immediately after sending the request body to the cgi script, which causes sys.stdin.read()
to return. But according to the cgi spec, a server is not required to send an eof signal after the body of the request, and I found that my cgi script was hanging on sys.stdin.read()
--when my script was on another server, which eventually caused a timeout error.
Therefore, in order to read in json data in the general case, you should do this:
content_len = int(os.environ["CONTENT_LENGTH"])
req_body = sys.stdin.read(content_len)
my_dict = json.loads(req_body)
The server sets a bunch of environment variables for cgi scripts, which contain header information, one of which is CONTENT_LENGTH.
Here is what a failed curl request looked like when I used myjson = json.load(sys.stdin)
:
-v verbose output
-H specify one header
--data implicitly specifies a POST request
Note that curl automatically calculates a Content-Length header
for you.
~$ curl -v \
> -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
> --data '{"a": 1, "b": 2}' \
> http://localhost:65451/cgi-bin/1.py
* Trying ::1...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connection failed
* connect to ::1 port 65451 failed: Connection refused
* Trying 127.0.0.1...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 65451 (#0)
> POST /cgi-bin/1.py HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:65451
> User-Agent: curl/7.58.0
> Accept: */*
> Content-Type: application/json
> Content-Length: 16
>
* upload completely sent off: 16 out of 16 bytes
=== hung here for about 5 seconds ====
< HTTP/1.1 504 Gateway Time-out
< Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2018 17:53:30 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html
< Server: inets/6.4.5
* no chunk, no close, no size. Assume close to signal end
<
* Closing connection 0
OK, let's move to your updated question.
First, you should pass Ajax data property in string representation. Then, since you mix dataType
and contentType
properties, change dataType
value to "json"
:
$.ajax({
url: "saveList.py",
type: "post",
data: JSON.stringify({'param':{"hello":"world"}}),
dataType: "json",
success: function(response) {
alert(response);
}
});
Finally, modify your code a bit to work with JSON request as follows:
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys, json
result = {'success':'true','message':'The Command Completed Successfully'};
myjson = json.load(sys.stdin)
# Do something with 'myjson' object
print 'Content-Type: application/json\n\n'
print json.dumps(result) # or "json.dump(result, sys.stdout)"
As a result, in the success
handler of Ajax request you will receive object with success
and message
properties.
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