Processing raw HTTP post requests¶
Description
How to read incoming HTTP POST values without form frameworks
Introduction¶
See HTTP request object for basics.
Here is an example view which checks if a form button has been pressed, and takes action accordingly. The view is implemented using grok framework.
View code:
import logging
from five import grok
from Products.CMFCore.interfaces import ISiteRoot
from Products.statusmessages.interfaces import IStatusMessage
grok.templatedir("templates")
class YourViewName(grok.View):
# This view is available on certain content types only
grok.context(IYourContentTypeInterface)
def update(self):
if "button-name" in self.request.form:
messages = IStatusMessage(self.request)
try:
# do someting
messages.addStatusMessage("Button pressed")
except Exception, e:
logger.exception(e)
messages.addStatusMessage(u"It did not work out. This exception came when processing the form:" + unicode(e))
Page template code:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"
lang="en"
metal:use-macro="here/main_template/macros/master"
i18n:domain="ora.objects">
<body>
<div metal:fill-slot="main">
<tal:main-macro metal:define-macro="main">
<h1 class="documentFirstHeading">
Sample form
</h1>
<p class="documentDescription">
Form description
</p>
<form action="@@yourviewname" method="POST">
<button type="submit" name="button-name">
Pres me
</button>
</form>
</tal:main-macro>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Magical Zope form variables¶
Zope provides some magical HTTP POST variable names which are automatically converted to native Python primivites by ZPublisher.
Quick explanation¶
If you have HTML:
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="member.age:int"></P><BR>
Then:
request.form["member.age"]
will return integer 30 instead of string "30".
Note
This behavior is hard-coded to ZPublisher and cannot be extended or disabled. The recommendation is not to use it, but do the conversion of data-types yourself or use a more high-level form framework like z3c.form.
