Question

I am just wondering how a web site posts information to an exe and how that exe grabs that information and outputs it using a template html file.

The code on the web side looks something like this:

<FORM ACTION="scripts/fetch.exe" METHOD=POST NAME=somename> 
<INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="id" WIDTH=30>
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME="nothing" VALUE="Submit">
</FORM>

How does the exe file then get that “id”?

Edit: to be a little more specific:

after that exe (which i have the source to if needed) is called it looks up the user in a directory based on that id, then prints out the users information based on a template file. i know what it does with the information, i just dont really understand how it gets that information.

Answer 1

This is a CGI application. When run, the web server will execute the program and provide data through environment variables and STDIN.

In this example, the POST form is read from STDIN in the form of

id=30&nothing=Submit