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CGI Environment Variables

The use of environment variables for argument passing, as well as the handy roxen extensions to the standard.

A CGI script receives all of its parameters via environment variables. Since most of the variables received this way could be altered by a malicious cracker, it is a sound practice never to trust the content of these variables blindly and be sure to use proper quoting at all times. This reminder being said, here are the variables sent and their contents:

AUTH_TYPE

When the browser authenticates itself, this variable contains the authentication type in use. The most common value is Basic.

CONFIGS

If any RoxenConfig configuration options were set, this is a space-separated array of them all.

CONTENT_LENGTH

For requests which have attached information, such as HTTP POST and PUT, this is the length of the said content given by the client (available to read from stdin). This value may safely be trusted, since it is computed by roxen (and not fetched from the HTTP headers).

CONTENT_TYPE

This is the content type of the data provided; see CONTENT_LENGTH.

COOKIES

A space-separated list of all cookie names sent with this request.

COOKIE_name

The value of the cookie name.

DOCUMENT_NAME

The filename of the CGI script.

DOCUMENT_URI

The path part of the URL to the CGI script.

GATEWAY_INTERFACE

The version of the CGI protocol used, which is CGI/1.1 for Roxen 2.1.

HTTP_ACCEPT

The contents of the HTTP Accept header of the request.

HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET

The contents of the HTTP Accept-Charset header of the request.

HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING

The contents of the HTTP Accept-Encoding header of the request.

HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE

The contents of the HTTP Accept-Language header of the request.

HTTP_AUTHORIZATION

The contents of the HTTP Authorization header of the request. It will only be available if the Raw user info variable has been set to Yes by the server administrator.

HTTP_HOST

The net_loc part of the URL, as sent in the HTTP Host header, for instance localhost:4711.

HTTP_PROXY_CONNECTION

The contents of the HTTP Proxy-Connection header of the request.

HTTP_PRAGMA

If the client sent any pragma header(s), they are provided here. For practical purposes, the only pragma header you are likely to encounter is no-cache, which some browsers (Netscape comes to mind) send when the user reloads the page.

HTTP_CONNECTION

A lowercased version of the HTTP Connection header; typically keep-alive.

HTTP_REFERER

The HTTP Referer header, if one was sent.

HTTP_USER_AGENT

The full name of the browser used.

INDEX

The query part of the URL, if present.

LAST_MODIFIED

The last modification date, HTTP formatted.

PATH_INFO

If your server has the Path Info Support module loaded and the script was fed path info parameters, it is provided in this variable. The path info is the rest of the path segment in the URL following the pathname of your script.

PATH_TRANSLATED

When the PATH_INFO variable is present, so is PATH_TRANSLATED. It contains a full filesystem path to the file that would be accessed when combining the directory name of the CGI script itself and the PATH_INFO variable.

PRESTATES

If Roxen found prestates in the URL, this is a space-separated array of those present.

PRESTATE_name

The value true if that prestate was present.

QUERY_STRING

The query part of the URL, if present.

QUERY_name

The value of the form variable name.

REMOTE_ADDR

The IP number of the client machine.

REMOTE_HOST

The domain name of the client machine, if Roxen has had time to find it. Since it takes some time to find what domain name a computer has this information will not be available the first time a certain computer connects to the server.

REMOTE_PORT

The port number used by the client.

REMOTE_USER

The login name used by the user.

REMOTE_PASSWORD

The password used by the user, only available if the Send decoded password variable is set to Yes by the administrator and the client authenticated itself.

REQUEST_METHOD

The method given in the HTTP request. In most cases, this will probably be GET or POST, but other HTTP methods, like PUT, are also possible. When using special protocols, such as WebDAV, other request methods may also occur.

ROXEN_AUTHENTICATED

If the client authenticated itself ok with Roxen's authentication module, this variable will contain the value 1.

ROXEN_USER_ID

If your server is setup to give all users user id cookies, this is the number of the user which requested the script right now.

SCRIPT_FILENAME

The complete path in the real file system to the CGI script.

SCRIPT_NAME

The path part in the URL.

SERVER_NAME

The domain name of the web server.

SERVER_PORT

The port number of the web servers. The default is 80 for HTTP or 443 for HTTPS, but it can be almost any value. If the server has several ports this variable will contain the port used to access the script.

SERVER_PROTOCOL

The protocol used.

SERVER_SOFTWARE

The name and version information of the web server.

SERVER_URL

The URL to the web server. Together with SCRIPT_NAME, this makes up the complete URL for the script.

SUPPORTS

A list of words, separated with spaces, of all features for which support information is available.>

SUPPORTS_feature

The value true if that feature is supported by the current browser.

VARIABLES

A list of all form variables.

VAR_name

The value of the form variable name.

WANTS_name

The value true if that RoxenConfig configuration option was set. See also CONFIGS.