Creating HTML and XHTML Pages in Python

Creating HTML and XHTML Pages in
Python - With and Without CGI

From Al Lukaszewski, former About.com Guide
1. Introduction
Creating HTML or XHTML pages in Python is as simple as output, whether from a CGI script or
the command line (or shell). Most good CGI scripts produce some form of HTML feedback to
thank the user and to verify that the action of the script did take place. Some thing that is not
often exploited in examples, however, is the ability to create another form field in the HTML. In
this tutorial, we will go from simple output to creating new forms for user input. After that, we
will also look briefly at creating web pages from the command line.
At the end of this tutorial, you will know how to use Python, both standing alone and as a CGI
script, to create both plain HTML pages and HTML form pages as well as being able to feed
command line options to your scripts.

2. Creating HTML Output
First, creating a new HTML document is simply a matter of putting the relevant HTML as the
argument of a print command:
print '''
content-type: text/html

<html>
<head>
<title> This is the title </title>
</head>
<body>
This is the body.
</body>
</html>
'''
Recall that triple quotes in Python tell it to print what follows verbatim. It disregards any
character sequences for strings, etc. If you need to represent variable data, default to using the
standard single quotation mark method.
x = "variable"
print "This is a %s." %(x)
With this information, one can create a bevy of HTML pages with variable content very quickly and
automagically.
3. Creating New Forms
Creating new forms in the output is the same as creating forms in a standard HTML page.
print '''

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<br>
<form action="./test.cgi" method="post">
<p> Name: <input type="text" name="name" id="name" value=""/></p>
<p> Street Address: <input type="text" name="st_address" id="st_address"
value=""/></p>
<p> Town: <input type="text" name="town" id="town" value=""/></p>
<p> County: <input type="text" name="county" id="county" value=""/></p>
<p> Postcode: <input type="text" name="postcode" id="postcode"
value=""/></p>
<p> Telephone: <input type="text" name="telephone" id="telephone"
value=""/></p>
<p> Fax: <input type="text" name="fax" id="fax" value=""/></p>
<p> Email: <input type="text" name="email" id="email" value=""/></p>
<p> Website: <input type="text" name="website" id="website" value=""/></p>
<br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>
'''
This code will create a form which receives contact information from the user and delivers it to 'test.cgi'
for processing. From there, the data can be processed using the methods discussed in "Programming
CGI With Python" .
4. Feeding Options To Your Script
If, however, you prefer to feed options to your scripts, this is easily done as well. Using the
above example, one simply need to add to the action line the command line argument prefaced
with a question mark. If one wants to test for a string argument of '1', the line might look like
this:
<form action="./test.cgi?1" method="post">
In the subsequent CGI script 'test.cgi', one would then have an if loop to test whether the
argument is '1' or not.
x = sys.argv[1]

if x == '1':
[do something]
else:
[do something else]
5. Feeding Options From the Command Line
As you know from reading Jennifer Kyrnin's tutorial on CGI, every CGI script should be
executable from the command line. We should be able to feed some options at the command line
and have them appear in the output.
To do this, one need only add string format operators to the output as needed. If, for example,
you wanted to automate a welcome statement at the head of the form generated in part 2 of this
tutorial, The script could look like this:
import sys name = sys.argv[1] print '''

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<br>
'''
print "Welcome to %s's Addressbook Entry Page!" %(name)
print '''
<form action="./test.cgi" method="post">
<p> Name: <input type="text" name="name" id="name" value=""/></p>
<p> Street Address: <input type="text" name="st_address" id="st_address"
value=""/></p>
# [more address items go here]
<p> Website: <input type="text" name="website" id="website" value=""/></p>
<br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>
'''
The sys module enables the program to interact with the system, here we need it to access the
options at the command line. We then assign the value to the variable 'name'. Within the output,
we break out of the verbatim output just long enough to print a line with the variable. Then we
resume and finish the page.
6. Concluding Comments
It is that simple. Whether working from the command line or the CGI script, the limits are the
extent of your imagination. From this point, one can do anything Python can do: retrieve local
information, submit information to a database, or contact a server across the world. The limits
are as broad as your imagination (and your network). And, as you can learn in the networking
section, you will need to imagine a lot if you want to push Python's limitations.
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