Python CGI not executing on Mac OSX 10.6.7
Question: Recently I started reading Mark Lutz's "Programming Python - Fourth Edition".
I am a mac user, using ActivePython and OSX 10.6.7. Anyways, everything was
going fine until the first instance of CGI in the book. The code example
creates a form, and uses a POST method for finding someone's name:

    
    
    <html>
    <title>Interactive Page</title>
    <body>
    <form method=POST action="cgi-bin/testing.cgi">
        <p><b>Enter your name:</b>
        <p><input type="text" name="user">
        <p><input type="submit">
    </form>
    </body>
    </html>
    

The CGI script is then put into a subdirectory, as shown in the HTML and looks
like this:

    
    
    #!/usr/bin/python
    import cgi
    form = cgi.FieldStorage()
    print("Content-type: text/html\n")
    print("<title>Reply Page</title>"
    if not 'user' in form:
        print("<h1>Who are you?</h1>")
    else:
        print("<h1>Hello <i>%s</i>!</h1>" % cgi.escape(form['user'].value))
    

However when I load the html and run a test, the script does not execute. What
occurs is that either the browser loads the entire script as Hypertext, or
that I download a .py file; depending on the browser I use (Eclipse and Safari
show me text, Chrome and Firefox download a file). If it means anything, when
I open the .html file it opens using file:// and not http://.

I'm not sure if this could be a problem with my script, or with a variety of
other things. If anyone has any suggestions on executing python-based CGI on a
mac that would be great.


Answer: You need to configure and run a webserver, then access the file through that
webserver with a url like <http://localhost:8080/cgi/foo.py>, and not the
local path to the file.

