Hello, in this video we are going to take a look at the basics of CGI programming. So CGI stands for common gateway interface and basically for a standard that provides, you know, an external gateway to interface with, you know, service such as HTTP service. So what we can basically do, I'm all going to do in this example, is just whip up some code that allows us to run HTML code within a Python file. So you might thinking, why would you want to do that Python, you know, is a great back in language. So you could, you know, do all of the Python functionality now like conditional statements, loops, all of that stuff, and then compact HTML to a web page. So a couple of prerequisites, one, make sure you've got access to some sort of server.
I'm using a local server called x Sam, and it is cross platform. It works on Mac Windows and Linux which is fantastic. So you pretty much covered so I would recommend exam you could also use you know, like an online server with one of your websites, that's fine as well. So I'll provide a link to exam with the video and you know the installation etc. pretty self explanatory. If you have any issues, as usual, you know, just feel free to reach out on all the systems.
The other thing is your server may need configuration to execute CGI. And if that is the case, and it doesn't work, or you know by the end of the video, then I recommend just checking out one of the other links I provided, which is a YouTube video not created by me it is created by another great YouTuber. And in that video, he goes through the process of setting up SG CGI on your server and he will Ubuntu button confirm that it works on Mac and Windows as well. So you should be a good but then if you have any issues, just feel free to reach out and I'll see you in gaming. setup. So now that the prerequisites out of the way, and we're not going to be doing it in the on line ID for the CGI programming section of this series, because you know, this is basically what we're going to be writing.
And as you can see, it just doesn't print out what we wanted to print out a webpage because that's just a terminal state command line interface. So we got a local server whipped up and our Haiti Doc's right here. So in here, what I'm going to do is save this file first. So it can actually get the IntelliSense. So for the P y. So the first line that we need to do with a CGI application is hash, exclamation mark or slash usr for slash bin slash Python.
So this is this essentially allows me to access the Python directory you could have this you know in non CGI programs and you will be But in need for CGI program then it's all going to be print based mainly then we're going to have a content type. And this will essentially tell browser that it is of type you know, HTML. So you know rendered as HTML. The no thing you will need is backslash, R, backslash n, backslash R, backslash n. These are end of line character. So this is an end the line at the end of the line. And I see some tutorials where they actually have no emitted this but it didn't work for me and most tutorials are point actually have backlash on backlash in at least one of them.
But the recommended amount is two, four and offline. So if it doesn't work for you have a look. Make sure you've got this. This, you know, did Trump me up a bit when I didn't have it. Next, we're just going to set the form a HTML page, but using print, so we're going to put print And as usual, I like to close all tags as soon as I open them, obviously to them intelligent to do that. It's always you know, I'll find a good practice to do.
Am I thinking why are we doing in all separate ones that are in the white? I'll explain in a moment why that isn't the case. So the head tag in there for meta tags, we're just going to keep it simple. And for a print, I mean the pre title, which will be the title of our web page. So title and gaming, why are we doing this point one nine, we'll do this on again. Once I wrote all of the code I will explain of it.
So my first CGI and now outside of the head, we are going to put our body so we're body. Again, let's close off the body before we get in here, we're going to do print. I'm just going to put like a header tag, page three, and we'll just close up is a dealer, body section. Fantastic. So we've got that say, before we run it, let me just explain why some of them some of the tags on separate lines, the clothing and tag, and some are on the same line. So we got HTML, we got the HTML.
So open, close it. And the reason there are separate lines because there's gonna be quite a bit of code in between. And when we add in to that post, I have you all on one line in the practical, same with the head, same with the body, whereas the title, we're probably going to make you more complex than that. Same with the Hey free point number make more complex than that. If we had a demon though they know a bunch of other tags inside a VM, they had tags and then they had like attributes and whatnot, then you would want to separate it out a bit more like I think you can, you know, sort of see it as a logical structure that you would have in you know, HTML if you rotation mouthful. So now that we save that, let's run it.
So, while the P and K, we get a server request error, so let's have a look what's wrong. First of all, make sure all the code is correct content type text HTML. Okay, let me just check the first tag usr correct for slash bin for such Python looks you know once you're good to me They may be an issue with with the actual rights. So let me try this, I found that this sometimes happens. So if I could see a tomato, I change the right to only sound by five there we go, Okay, if you get that problem, just change the rights to some five five for reading, writing execution. So here we go.
As you can see, it's shown this my thinking where the rest of it remember, this isn't printed, we got the my first CGI app up here. This always just tell the web page, you know, Python that it's a HTML page and this is all going to display if you were to inspect it, and go to head. We have the title my thinking we didn't want shadow root or something automatically generated by the web browser. Again, you know, some of this is just automatically generated by the web browser including this as well. But we've got our hate free as we are in our Python code. So I think that's it for the basic CGI, you know, we'll be covering SEO a bit more in depth in the following videos.
Thanks for watching. And like I said, because this can be quite a heavy topic just just in get going just to get started, feel free to message me and I will help you out. And as usual, I look forward to seeing you in the next video.