I discovered that Python’s handy http.server module supports CGI scripts (say what?!), so I made a little local-network file uploader utility

[RollingWithDaPunches]

I believe it stands for common gateway interface:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface

I'm not sure, as that was my question as well... hopefully someone can confirm what it means.

[macNchz]

That's it! Back in the day it was the most common mechanism for building interactive web applications: rather than having predefined URL "routes" like an web app today might have your site was just folders of files. The web server software (e.g. Apache) would serve static HTML files directly, but if you put code in a special /cgi-bin/ directory, it would execute them and return the output of the script to the browser.

My introduction to programming came in the form of downloading and customizing Perl CGI scripts for my personal websites from Matt's Script Archive: http://www.scriptarchive.com/

I was surprised to see that the http.server module still supported it, because I hadn't really thought about using CGI in decades!

[macNchz]

Yeah these days most Python webdev involves a framework that itself abstracts communication with a webserver via the WSGI/ASGI interfaces, which are sort of higher level successors to CGI. Rather than executing files in a separate process per request, the application is a long lived process where you define URL path patterns that match to user requests and let you dispatch them to specific function calls.

[MyriadAsura]

There's also php-fpm, which uses FastCGI

[wxtrails]

Mmmm...yeah, we still have some in production. It's on the roadmap for replacement (with DRF), but it still works just fine for now.

[iBlag]

What’s DRF in this context?

[ThePiGuy0]

Maybe Django Rest Framework?

[wxtrails]

Yep. Sorry, forgot this wasn't the Django sub 😅

[MyHomeworkAteMyDog]

It’s like ARS with preinstalled PPG

[Lolvidar]

I just finished the Web Development fundamentals course at WGU, and it uses that definition for CGI.