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Dynamic Documents

Documents generated as the output from programs invoked by the server in response to requests are known as dynamic documents. They are a powerful feature allowing great flexibility through their capacity to serve volatile information. They enable documents to be generated `on the fly' from information that is perhaps being constantly updated, or algorithmically derived from user input. Documents, or lists of links to documents, may also be returned as the result of searching indexes for the occurrence of a search term that has been entered by the user.

Dynamic documents are widely used on the Web in a variety of ways. They may be used to create gateways to other information systems and applications. They are frequently used to process the input from fill-out forms and also from image maps. Within Web resources, links may be created to virtual documents which, when requested, must be dynamically generated before they can be served.

The interface between the server and the programs that generate dynamic documents is defined by the Common Gateway Interface specification, discussed in Section . Sections and are a practical guide to the creation and testing of dynamic documents. The NCSA Web Server also provides another mechanism for generating information, known as server side includes, described in Section .

• The CGI specification
  • Inputs to the CGI script
    • Command line arguments
    • Environment variables
    • Standard input stream
  • Output from the CGI script
• Writing CGI scripts
  • Script identification
  • Standard utilities
    • The cgiparse program
    • The cgiutils program
  • Processing input from fill-out forms
  • Processing image map input
  • Searching of indexes
  • Techniques and considerations
    • Keeping state information
    • Minimizing response times
    • Management of temporary files
    • Periodic updating of documents
• Testing dynamic documents
  • Testing in isolation from the server
  • Testing with the server
  • Security aspects
• NCSA server side includes

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.