Processing raw HTTP post requests

Description

How to read incoming HTTP POST values without form frameworks

Introduction

See HTTP request object for basics.

Here is an example view which checks if a form button has been pressed, and takes action accordingly.

Register the view in configure.zcml:

<configure
    xmlns="http://namespaces.zope.org/zope"
    xmlns:browser="http://namespaces.zope.org/browser"
    xmlns:plone="http://namespaces.plone.org/plone"
    i18n_domain="example.dexterityforms">

    ...

    <browser:page
          for="Products.CMFCore.interfaces.ISiteRoot"
          name="yourviewname"
          permission="zope2.View"
          class=".yourview.YourViewName"
          template="yourview.pt"
          />

</configure>

Code for the browser view, name the file yourview.py:

from Products.CMFCore.interfaces import ISiteRoot
from Products.Five.browser import BrowserView
from Products.statusmessages.interfaces import IStatusMessage


class YourViewName(BrowserView):

    def update(self):

        if "button-name" in self.request.form:

            messages = IStatusMessage(self.request)
            try:
                # do something
                messages.add("Button pressed")

            except Exception, e:
                logger.exception(e)
                messages.add(u"It did not work out. This exception came when processing the form:" + unicode(e))

Page template code, name the file yourview.pt:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"
      lang="en"
      metal:use-macro="here/main_template/macros/master"
      i18n:domain="ora.objects"
      tal:define="foo view/update">
<body>
    <div metal:fill-slot="main">
        <tal:main-macro metal:define-macro="main">

                <h1 class="documentFirstHeading">
                        Sample form
                </h1>

                <p class="documentDescription">
                      Form description
                </p>


                <form action="@@yourviewname" method="POST">
                        <button type="submit" name="button-name">
                                Press me
                        </button>
                </form>

        </tal:main-macro>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Magical Zope form variables

Zope provides some magical HTTP POST variable names which are automatically converted to native Python primitives by ZPublisher.

Quick explanation

If you have HTML:

<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="member.age:int"></P><BR>

Then:

request.form["member.age"]

will return integer 30 instead of string “30”.

Note

This behavior is hard-coded to ZPublisher and cannot be extended or disabled. The recommendation is not to use it, but do the conversion of data-types yourself or use a more high-level form framework like z3c.form.

More information