What Comes Out of the Form

• The form produces a single (long) string of text containing:
  • the variables created by the form
  • the values entered into them by the user

• Example:

  http://www.mississippi.com/literary.html?name=Mark+Twain&age=44

• URL-encoding format:
  • ? delimits the document's URL from the form data
  • & delimits name/value pairs
  • = delimits the name from the value

Lab Find a form that submits via the GET method. Fill it in and submit. Observe in the browser's URL box the url-encoding of the data you entered.

• Advanced topic: How URL-encoded data is processed:
  • Here is a sample Perl program.
  • It reads URL-encoded data (returned from an HTML form when a user clicks a submit button).
  • A popular strategy today is to build applications in which the user interface is the web browser.
  • Programs such as this one make the data entered into each individual field easily accessible to the programmer writing the application.