Python CGI script and CSS style sheet

[Tim Chase]

> I'm working with a Python CGI script that I am trying to use with an
> external CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and it is not reading it from the
> web server.  The script runs fine minus the CSS formatting.  Does
> anyone know if this will work within a Python CGI?  It seems that line
> 18 is not being read properly.  One more thing.  I tested this style
> sheet with pure html code (no python script) and everything works
> great.
> 
> Listed below is a modified example.
> 
> ++++++++++
> 
> 1    #!/usr/bin/python
> 2
> 3    import cgi
> 4
> 5    print "Content-type: text/html\n"

The answer is "it depends".  Mostly on the configuration of your 
web-server.  Assuming you're serving out of a cgi-bin/ directory, 
you'd be referencing

   http://example.com/cgi-bin/foo.py

If your webserver (apache, lighttpd, whatever) has been 
configured for this directory to return contents of 
non-executable items, your above code will reference

   http://example.com/cgi-bin/central.css

and so you may be able to just drop the CSS file in that directory.

However, I'm fairly certain that Apache can be (and often is) 
configured to mark folders like this as "execute only, no 
file-reading".  If so, you'll likely get some sort of Denied 
message back if you fetch the CSS file via HTTP.

A better way might be to reference the CSS file as 
"/media/central.css"

12 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" 
href="/media/central.css" />

and then put it in a media folder which doesn't have the 
execute-only/no-read permission set.

Another (less attractive) alternative is to have your CGI sniff 
the incoming request, so you can have both

  http://example.com/cgi-bin/foo.py
  http://example.com/cgi-bin/foo.py?file=css

using the 'file' GET parameter to return the CSS file instead of 
your content.  I'd consider this ugly unless deploy-anywhere is 
needed, in which case it's not so bad because the deployment is 
just the one .py file (and optionally an external CSS file that 
it reads and dumps).

-tkc