Editing Common Gateway Interface (section)

== Uses ==

CGI is often used to process input information from the user and produce the appropriate output. An example of a CGI program is one implementing a [[wiki]]. If the user agent requests the name of an entry, the Web server executes the CGI program. The CGI program retrieves the source of that entry's page (if one exists), transforms it into [[HTML]], and prints the result. The Web server receives the output from the CGI program and transmits it to the user agent. Then if the user agent clicks the "Edit page" button, the CGI program populates an HTML <code>textarea</code> or other editing control with the page's contents. Finally if the user agent clicks the "Publish page" button, the CGI program transforms the updated HTML into the source of that entry's page and saves it.