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yet another cgi script

Create another CGI script

Let’s take a moment to recall what is required from the generate_
timing_data.py CGI script. Based on your hand-drawn sketch from It’s probably a good
earlier, your need to generate a new HTML page that contains the top three idea to add a title
times for the selected athlete: to this page.
This looks like a
HTML heading for
the page, right?
Timing data for Sarah: Let’s include

the ahtlete’s
full name and
2.18 DOB here.
2.21

This might be best 2.22
rendered as an
unordered HTML list.
Home Select another athlete.

Two hyperlinks: one jumps to the home
page, whereas the other returns to the
previous selection page.

But how do you know which athlete is selected?

When you click on a radio-button and then press the Select button, a new
web request is sent to the server. The web request identifies the CGI script
to execute (in this case, that’s generate_timing_data.py), together
with the form’s data. The web server arranges to send the form’s data to your
CGI script as its input. Within your code, you can access the form data using
Python’s cgi module, which is part of the standard library:

Import the Grab all of the form data
“cgi” library. import cgi and put it in a dictionary.
form_data = cgi.FieldStorage()

athlete_name = form_data['which_athlete'].value

Access a named piece of data from the form’s data.
244 Chapter 7