The Get-Post option...

[Alain Farmer]

Hello Shari,

>> I think you are misunderstanding the meaning 
>> of "post". POST sends a request in POST-format
>> to a url, e.g. a CGI app.

Both methods ( GET and POST ) submit a request to a
web server. Plus the responding appl on the
server-side is not necessarily using the CGI protocol.
You could use GET or POST to request a PHP page with
the form elements as parameters to PHP page-generaion
process.

The GET method sends these parameters, e.g. EXTRA
info, appended to the URL. This URL and its extra
information are visible to the user, limited in
length, constrained in terms of content (allowed
chars) but, the nice thing about them is that they can
be bookmarked. SearchEngins use GET so that you can
bookmark your search ; not just the page.

The POST method sends the EXTRA information appended
to the request message as you would attach an
attachment to an e-mail message. The extra information
does NOT appear in the URL. You cannot bookmark the
extra info, as you can with GET, but the URL is clean,
the information is more secure because it's less
visible, there can be far mor information included
with a POST than you could ever put into a URL.

>> I think what you are looking for is an FTP upload?
>> post userList to url "http://www.someurl/list.txt"

There are more than two methods, e.g. GET and POST.
There are also other methods which get much less press
than the two former ones. The PUT method, for
instance, allows one to store content on a server as a
[new] file. 

> Actually I have not done one thing as yet...
> which is to surf the net for CGI scripts
> for this... It sounds like they do exist.

Right you are, Shari. All you need is a basic MC-based
CGI stack; which you can find in MetaCard's tutorials,
in the list's archives and, therefore, in the minds of
many of your fellow MC-netizens as well.

Once you got the basic CGI working, script it so that
it creates the file[s] you wish. If it seems way too
easy, notably for those of you with some Java
experience, then I guess that's why MC stacks/apps
could be considered as "unsafe" in environments
requiring security. The web and Java do NOT normally
allow writing-to-the-disk with the notable exception
of cookies.

Have fun!

Alain

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