Parsing POST and GET variables simultaneously?

David Heinemeier Hansson · Jul 20, 2003

Isn't it possible to get variables from POST and GET simultaneously?
Consider the script test.rbx below:

require 'cgi'
cgi = CGI.new
print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\nContent-type: text/html\r\n\r\n"

if cgi.params.empty? then
puts "<html><body>"
puts "<form action='test.rbx?valueFromGet=here' method='post'>"
puts "<input type='text' name='valueFromPost'>"
puts "</form></body></html>"
else
print cgi.params.inspect
end

Calling test.rbx?valueFromGet=here gives me:
{"valueFromPost"=>["there"]}

Calling text.rbx and entering here "here" in the input gives me:
{"valueFromPost"=>["here"]}

...where I would have expected:
{"valueFromPost"=>["here"],"valueFromPost"=>["there"]}

Any ideas on how to get the latter?

james_b · Jul 20, 2003

David said:
Isn't it possible to get variables from POST and GET simultaneously?

Aren't they two distinct request types? You either do one or the other?

I suppose you could POST to a URL that included a query string, grab the
POST data and explicitly parse the query string (the PATH_INFO cgi
variable, or maybe SCRIPT_NAME).

James

Aredridel · Jul 20, 2003

Aren't they two distinct request types? You either do one or the other?

One or the other, but:

I suppose you could POST to a URL that included a query string, grab the
POST data and explicitly parse the query string (the PATH_INFO cgi
variable, or maybe SCRIPT_NAME).

It's not post and get at the same time, but a post can have a query
string as well as post-data. There's also nothing that says that post
has to take a URLencoded string -- some protocols on top of HTTP (DAV &
company) use XML posted to a URL.

Mark J. Reed · Jul 20, 2003

Isn't it possible to get variables from POST and GET simultaneously?

Not really, since REQUEST_METHOD can only be set to one of 'GET' or 'POST',
and cgi.rb takes its cue from that.

Even with REQEUT_METHOD set to POST, you can still get the query string via
cgi.query_string, or use '/' instead of the '?', in which case it shows up
as cgi.path_info:

<form action="test.rbx/valueFromGet=here" method="post">

Either way, you have to parse the string yourself, though. Identify
the name=value pairs, decode the '+'s and '%xx's into spaces and other
unprintable characters, etc.

-Mark

Mark J. Reed · Jul 20, 2003

Somehow, despite the explicit instructions in my subject line,
this has turned into YAEPT. The sheer power of that
topic is amazing; it's like a black hole sucking in all threads
which get too close to its event horizon. Obviously my
English phoneme thread started out way too close; I was orbiting
the darn thing. Anyway . .

AFAIK, all Americans pronounce "Mary" as /meiri/;
they pronounce "merry" and "marry" as /meiri/ also. For me they are
/mEri/ and /m&ri/ respectively.

Most definitely not. For me, my wife, our tenant, and most of my
friends and coworkers, all three of them are [mE`r\i], with the
same vowel (apart from the rhoticization) as "met", "bled", etc;
as distinguished from the vowel of "mate", "blade", etc.
Other a+r words have the same "short-e" vowel: "bare" (which
doesn't rhyme with the trade name Bayer, which has /ei/),
"care", "dare", "fair", "fare", "hair", "hare", etc.

As for "yeah", I've always thought it was a peculiar and perverse
spelling for the word /jV/.

Again, not hereabouts. "Yeah" is pronounced /j{/; it seems to be a
exception to the rule that disallows lax open monosyllables in English.

If I speak it in extreme slow motion,
it comes out /je:::::V/, but that's bizarre.

Here it's more like /j{::::ijV/.

-Mark

From (e-mail address removed) Sun Jul 20 17:14:14 2003
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
To: David Heinemeier Hansson <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Parsing POST and GET variables simultaneously?
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
X-Julian-Day: JD 2452841.38079
X-Roman-Date: ante diem XIII =?utf-8?Q?Kalend=C4=81s_Aug?=
=?utf-8?B?dXN0xIFz?= A.U.C. MMDCCLVI
X-Mutt-References: <[email protected]>
X-Mutt-Fcc: =sent
Status: RO
Content-Length: 943
Lines: 37

class CGI
def query_params
params = {}

ENV['QUERY_STRING'].split("&").each { |p|
k, v = p.split("=")
params[CGI.unescape(k)] = CGI.unescape(v)
}

params
end
end

..that does the trick. God, I love Ruby. May I never stray back into
PHP-land again

May your wish come true.

And that solution will indeed work
most of the time. However, to be perfectly compliant with modern
protocols, you need to split on either '&' or ';'. And it'd be
better to use the query_string method than to directly access the
environment variable:

class CGI
def query_params
params = {}

query_string.split(/[&;]/).each { |p|
k, v = p.split('=')
params[CGI.unescape(k)] = CGI.unescape(v)
}

params
end
end

-Mark

Mark J. Reed · Jul 20, 2003

Eep! Holy Wrong Newsgroup, Batman!

It did include the stuff that was meant to go here, though, which
I hereby cut to.

Sorry about that.

class CGI
def query_params
params = {}

ENV['QUERY_STRING'].split("&").each { |p|
k, v = p.split("=")
params[CGI.unescape(k)] = CGI.unescape(v)
}

params
end
end

..that does the trick. God, I love Ruby. May I never stray back into
PHP-land again

May your wish come true.

And that solution will indeed work
most of the time. However, to be perfectly compliant with modern
protocols, you need to split on either '&' or ';'. And it'd be
better to use the query_string method than to directly access the
environment variable:

class CGI
def query_params
params = {}

query_string.split(/[&;]/).each { |p|
k, v = p.split('=')
params[CGI.unescape(k)] = CGI.unescape(v)
}

params
end
end

-Mark

Damphyr · Jul 20, 2003

Mark said:
Eep! Holy Wrong Newsgroup, Batman!

It did include the stuff that was meant to go here, though, which
I hereby cut to.

Sorry about that.

Darn, and that was so much more interesting then GETs and POSTs

.
For a while you had me searching through the list to figure out what
YAEPT is. (Yet Another English Phonetis Thread ? )

V.-

____________________________________________________________________
http://www.freemail.gr - äùñåÜí õðçñåóßá çëåêôñïíéêïý ôá÷õäñïìåßïõ.
http://www.freemail.gr - free email service for the Greek-speaking.

Mauricio Fernández · Jul 20, 2003

Eep! Holy Wrong Newsgroup, Batman!

What mailing list (newsgroup?) does that belong to?
It's interesting.

--
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| |_) | (_| | |_\__ \ | | | | | (_| | | | |
|_.__/ \__,_|\__|___/_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I
only coded it.
-- Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting

Hal E. Fulton · Jul 21, 2003

----- Original Message -----
From: "Damphyr" <[email protected]>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: Parsing POST and GET variables simultaneously?

Darn, and that was so much more interesting then GETs and POSTs .
For a while you had me searching through the list to figure out what
YAEPT is. (Yet Another English Phonetis Thread ? )

Yeah, I thought it was interesting, too... meant for
sci.lang or where? Haven't read that one in ages...

Hal

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Parsing POST and GET variables simultaneously?

David Heinemeier Hansson

james_b

Aredridel

Mark J. Reed

Mark J. Reed

Mark J. Reed

Damphyr

Mauricio Fernández

Hal E. Fulton

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