Python http server: handle POST application/octet-stream

Question

I have a very basic webserver working with BaseHTTPServer. I can handle simple GET and POST requests (even multipart/form-data), but I am having trouble handling "application/octet-stream". Any hints?

Answer 1

The cgi module's form parser is meant only for multipart/form-data .

Single part forms - meaning anything with a standard MIME type in self.headers.getheader('content-type') - are available to you as the normal binary data via self.rfile - no need to parse them.

Take a look here:

• http://docs.python.org/library/basehttpserver.html
• http://docs.python.org/library/cgi.html
• http://fragments.turtlemeat.com/pythonwebserver.php

Furthermore, don't be confused by that cgi stuff. It appears to be antiquated naming convention from the old days (pre Ruby-on-Rails) when cgi was common and web frameworks were unheard of.