CGI Environment Variables

This tables list the variables most commonly used with the Empress Toolkit, the complete list can be found at the URL specified above.

Variable	Description
SERVER_NAME	The server's hostname, DNS alias, or IP address as it would appear in self-referencing URLs.
REQUEST_METHOD	The method with which the request was made. For HTTP, this is "GET", "HEAD", "POST", etc.
PATH_INFO	The extra path information, as given by the client. In other words, scripts can be accessed by their virtual pathname, followed by extra information at the end of this path. The extra information is sent as PATH_INFO. This information should be decoded by the server if it comes from a URL before it is passed to the CGI script.
PATH_TRANSLATED	The server provides a translated version of PATH_INFO, which takes the path and does any virtual-to-physical mapping to it.
SCRIPT_NAME	A virtual path to the script being executed, used for self-referencing URLs.
QUERY_STRING	The information which follows the ? in the URL which referenced this script. This is the query information. It should not be decoded in any fashion. This variable should always be set when there is query information, regardless of command line decoding.
REMOTE_HOST	The hostname making the request. If the server does not have this information, it should set REMOTE_ADDR and leave this unset.
REMOTE_ADDR	The IP address of the remote host making the request.
REMOTE_USER	If the server supports user authentication, and the script is protected, this is the username they have authenticated as.
REMOTE_IDENT	If the HTTP server supports RFC 931 identification, then this variable will be set to the remote user name retrieved from the server. Usage of this variable should be limited to logging only.
CONTENT_TYPE	For queries which have attached information, such as HTTP POST and PUT, this is the content type of the data.
CONTENT_LENGTH	The length of the said content as given by the client.