Available 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're 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. See the supports chapter in the Website Creator manual for more information.

• SUPPORTS_feature
  
  

  The value true if that feature is supported by the current browser. See the supports chapter in the Website Creator manual for more information.

• 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.