From: Julian Snitow <vangczung@...>
Date: 2003-05-24T07:08:00+09:00
Subject: Re: Naive CGI question

On Sat, 24 May 2003 05:22:24 +0900, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

> I'm betting this is either impossible 
> or highly browser-dependent.
> 
> It's not entirely obvious to me that
> a web server is needed to run a CGI
> that is *on the local machine*. (As,
> by analogy, we don't need to run a 
> server just to look at local static
> HTML files.)
> 
> Yet while it seems theoretically 
> possible that a browser could do this,
> I don't know whether any of them 
> actually will.
> 
> Just to stay somewhat on-topic -- I 
> have downloaded Webrick, I just haven't
> yet understood it.  :)
> 
> So, a serverless CGI -- possible in
> theory and practice, in theory only,
> or just not happening?
> 
> 
> Hal

On my own pet webserver, I find it simpler to bypass the ruby cgi library
entirely, and work directly with mod_ruby:

# under mod_ruby, $stdout becomes an apache request object
if defined? Apache
  $stdout.content_type = 'text/html'
  $stdout.sync_header = true
  $stdout.send_http_header
end

Between that, and ENV['HTTP_FOOBAR'], I can run my web scripts from the
command line without having the clunky cgi "insert values" prompt in the
way.

Julian