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debugging data

The data appears to have changed type

...ummm, I see. But
Look at the CGI somehow, the data
code...it gets the data that arrives isn’t an
from the model and AthleteList.
sends it to the web
browser...

Let’s add a debugging line of code to your CGI script to try and determine what’s
going on. Recall that the CGI mechanism captures any output your script sends
to standard output by default, so let’s use code like this to send your debugging
messgage to the web server’s console, which is displaying on standard error: Redirect the output
from “print()” to
Import “sys” import sys “stderr”, rather
from the than the default,
standard library. print(json.dumps(athletes[athlete_name]), file=sys.stderr) which is “stdout”.

Run your app again and, of course, it’s still crashes with a TypeError.
However, if you check your web server’s console screen, you’ll see that the
data being sent as the JSON web response is clearly visible. Notice anything?
File Edit Window Help JustWhatsInTheData
$ python3 simple_httpd.py
This is a list of Starting simple_httpd on port: 8080
192.168.1.33 - - [18/Sep/2010 17:40:04] "GET /cgi-bin/generate_names.py HTTP/1.1" 200 -
athlete timing 192.168.1.33 - - [18/Sep/2010 17:40:08] "POST /cgi-bin/generate_data.py HTTP/1.1" 200 -
values…but where’s ["2-44", "3:01", "2.44", "2.55", "2.51", "2:41", "2:41", "3:00", "2-32", "2.11", "2:26"]
the name and
DOB values?

284 Chapter 8