Matplotlib and CGI

CGI, being quite simple, is the perfect start for Matplotlib on the Web.

What is CGI

CGI is the acronym for Common Gateway Interface, and it's one of the oldest (and hence well-supported by almost every web server) ways to write web applications.

CGI defines a way for a web server to interact with external content-generating programs, which are often referred to as CGI programs or CGI scripts. It is the simplest, and the most common way to put dynamic content on a web site.

At a very low level, we can see a CGI script as just a script executed by a web server, receiving the inputs (if any) from the request and then returning the result to the user browser.

The CGI programs code must be interpreted by a web server. As there are far too many web servers available, each with its own configuration, we decided to show how to configure the most widely used one: Apache.

Configuring Apache for CGI execution

In this section, we are about to see how to configure Apache to permit CGI...