Passing environment variables from an hypertext protocol server application programming interface

US6549952B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• International Business Machines Corporation · US

Inventors

• Ernst Robert Plassmann · Pflugerville, US
• Michael Bradford Ault · Austin, US
• Mickella Ann Rosiles · Austin, US
• Shaw-Ben Shi · Austin, US
• Theodore Jack London Shrader · Austin, US
• Bruce Arland Rich · Round Rock, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jan 28, 1997
• Grant date: Apr 15, 2003
• Expiry date: Jan 28, 2017

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04L67/02
• WIPO field: Digital communication
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A method of enabling an HTTP server plug-in to pass an unmangled environment variable into a CGI process begins by configuring the HTTP server to initially override a CGI service method. When the server processes an HTTP request, the server plug-in, which is called prior to the CGI service method and is running in a process of the HTTP server, inserts a “name value” pair prepended with a marker in a request header parameter block of the HTTP server. Then, the CGI service override method executes the server's original (i.e. native) CGI service method, causing it to run an encapsulation program in the CGI process. This program scans the environment of the CGI process for any string prepended with a given HTTP code (e.g., the string “HTTP_”) and the marker. If it finds any such string, the program strips the given HTTP code and the marker from a remainder of the string and resets the environment variable into the CGI process in an “unmangled” form. The target CGI program is then executed in the CGI process.